Cooperation with Russia comprises practically all areas of the European Space Agency's (ESA) space activities. Several months ago the ESA and Russian federal space agency signed a formal agreement to work together on the ExoMars program to determine whether life ever existed on Mars.

The Voice of Russia asked Frederic Nordlund, Head of the International Relations Department of European Space Agency (ESA), about it's plans.

Can you tell us, what are the current plans of ESA for the Space Exploration and what directions are your top priorities for the next year?

The European Space Agency (ESA) actually contributes to the Global Space Exploration with many science driven missions to explore the solar system. So, the ESA has already launched missions to Mars, to Venus, to Titan, which is one of the moon of Saturn and we actually have landed on Titan, so this is farthest landing of human produced space object in the solar system.

We are having space probe, which will visit Comet Rosetta next year and we have a mission, which is coming up to visit Mercury, planet Mercury. In addition, we have, of course, participation in the international space station, so we are one of the international space station partner and we are using the international space station to produce science and scientific research, but also as a test battery for the exploration in the future.

And last but certainly not least, we have full partnership with Russia on Mars exploration and in particular for two Mars robotic missions, included in the ExoMars program. One mission in 2016, which will be an orbiter with small entry, descent and landing system and in 2018 rover that we will land on Mars. And this is very important milestone in our collaboration with Russia for space program.

And do you see India, Brazil and China as your rivals or rather possible partners for collaboration in space?

Certainly not rivals. And, certainly, partners for space undertakings which are already by themselves very difficult to undertake by any nation or any space agency and the nations that you are mentioning are showing fantastic developments.

Certainly, starting with China, which is a fully-fledged space nation and India as well. And we are, for example, working in the context of scientific research with these nations, for example, we've had the opportunity to work on the mission for solar physics with China or to provide some help for Chandrayaan, which was lunar robotic mission of India.

And we are working with Brazil in their science, for example, so we are already engaged in major collaborations with these nations so they are definitely partners and not rivals.

And what about China?

China is, as I mentioned, fully-fledged space nation, which is having wide range of capabilities and the access of our collaboration with China is on science, which is also the priority for the ESA.

So, we are really addressing China in collaboration, as I said, in science or we have had this mission in solar physics, called "Double Star", which was very successful and we have engaged in the project in our science called "Dragon", so very successful because it involves many members of scientific communities in Europe and in China, for example.

And we are looking into next scientific opportunities. Of course, space activities come always with cooperation and degree of competition but our access is really on collaboration in space science and it is working well with China.

Is the core funding to the ESA enough to compete with other major players of the space race?

Well, I would say, there is no space race. Because and this is good news actually, because you know, the space race of the 1960s was certainly a motivation for

Source: Voice of Russia