Rosalind Franklin (ExoMars) 2028
MSSL leads the team providing the Panoramic Stereo Cameras for ESA's Rosalind Franklin (ExoMars) 2028 rover mission, and are also helping build the Enfys infrared instrument.

29 January 2025
MSSL leads the team providing the Panoramic Stereo Cameras for ESA's Rosalind Franklin (ExoMars) 2028 rover mission, and are also helping build the Enfys infrared instrument.
The Rosalind Franklin Rover is a joint mission between ESA and NASA. MSSL leads the PanCam team to provide the rover's scientific ‘eyes’, and are contributing to the complementary Enyfs infrared spectrometer. The Rosalind Franklin Rover is scheduled to launch in 2028 and arrive at Mars in 2030. It will drill up to 2m below the harsh Martian surface to search for signs of past, or even present, life.
PanCam includes two Wide Angle Cameras (WACs) and a High Resolution Camera (HRC). The WACs are spaced 50cm apart for better stereo vision than our human eyes, and each has an 11-position filter wheel for colour images and to provide geological and atmospheric science. The HRC will look closely at rocks to determine texture. Enfys will look at part of HRCs field of view, providing infrared spectra to help with mineral identification. Together, PanCam and Enfys help set the context, and help the mission team decide where to drill.
The Martian environment presents the main technological challenge facing PanCam. Because the instrument is mounted on the rover mast, it is exposed to fine dust which settles from the atmosphere and is exposed to a difficult thermal environment. On Mars, temperatures may fall as low as -120C depending on latitude and season, and there is, like on Earth, constant diurnal cycling during the 24 hour 37 minute ‘sol’, with warmer temperatures during the day and colder temperatures at night. Even near the equator, at the rover’s Oxia Planum landing site, the range is quite extreme: perhaps as "warm" as 0-10 °C during the day, but falling to -90 to -100 °C at night. The PanCam and Enfys teams need to ensure that electronics and mechanical parts maintain reliable operation throughout the 218 sol mission.
Like the rest of the rover, PanCam and Enfys have planetary protection challenges, for example ensuring that we do not contaminate the Martian surface, not only because we want to be good planetary neighbours, but also so we do not affect the results of the sensitive biological and chemical analyses to be performed on-board.