Posted by tourdemars to General News at January 26, 2004 12:00 PM

The designers of Soviet Lunokhod moon crawlers will take part in the creation of a similar machine for the exploration of Mars under a programme launched by the European Space Agency. Russian technologies will be used in designing and building a Mars rover, an ESA official said. In his words, the European Aurora project calls for cooperation with two Russian organisations – the Babakin Research Centre, and the Lavochkin Research and Production Association. These organisations have rich experience of building interplanetary spacecraft and the ESA wants to use their expertise for designing the technical part of the Mars rover.