However, besides giving engineers some breathing room, the latest move by itself does not resolve a multitude of financial, political and technical problems facing the project. In fact, the delay is guaranteed to further balloon an already overstretched budget, mainly because the agency will have to keep a large team of engineers on the payroll for an extra two years. Sources within the industry estimated that the 1.2-billion-Euro project (a number that includes both the ExoMars rover and the Trace Gas Orbiter, currently on its way to Mars) could still need 200 to 300 million Euro to launch the rover in 2020.

Jorge Vago, a leading ExoMars scientist at ESA’s Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, protested these figures as too high. However, he added that the project team had been negotiating with the industry to “firm up the development cost estimates.” In other words, ESA and its contractors are yet to agree on the final cost, and, according to multiple sources, the agency had so far been offering considerably less money than the industry was asking for to finish the job. The final sum is not expected to be finalized until the end of June, when delegations of various space agencies in Europe gather for an ESA Council meeting in order to decide how to proceed.

At the same time, ESA faces an even more difficult task of convincing European politicians to pony up all that extra cash to pay for the rest of the project beginning next year.

Industry insiders say that an upcoming landing on Mars of the Schiaparelli module could be an important morale boost for the beleaguered project. Conceived as an engineering dress rehearsal for the ExoMars rover, Schiaparelli was successfully launched in March along with the Trace Gas Orbiter. The joint spacecraft will arrive in the vicinity of the Red Planet on October 19, when Schiaparelli will separate from the TGO and make a risky plunge into the Martian atmosphere. This milestone will take place just weeks before European ministers responsible for the continent’s space budget will meet in Luzern, Switzerland, in December.