Europe's beleaguered ExoMars rover is one of several international collaborations whose future looks bleak owing to unprecedented cuts to US science funding proposed by US President Donald Trump's administration. Last year, NASA agreed to provide both launch and landing gear for ExoMars's Rosalind Franklin rover after the European Space Agency (ESA) cut ties with its former partner, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The rover is designed to hunt for ancient life on the red planet. But Trump's proposed budget for NASA for fiscal year 2026 ' published on 30 May ' would slash to zero the US contributions to ExoMars, as part of a cut of almost 50% to NASA's science division, compared with 2024 levels. Other ESA missions that could lose US contributions include ARIEL, a space telescope scheduled to launch in 2029 that is designed to study the atmosphere of exoplanets; LISA, a space-based gravitational-wave detector set to fly in 2035; and Envision, a...
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