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Paolo Ferri, Today’s Space Pro

Few people understand the challenges and triumphs of planetary exploration as deeply as Paolo Ferri, former Head of Mission Operations at ESA. In this conversation, he shares his insights on NASA’s recent claim of a “potential biosignature” on Mars, Europe’s evolving role alongside NASA in Martian exploration, and the lessons ESA can draw from past missions like Rosetta to ensure a resilient future in space. Dive into his thoughtful reflections on science, strategy, and international cooperation at the frontier of discovery.

In Ai confini dell’universo, Paolo Ferri takes readers on an extraordinary journey behind the scenes of space exploration — from the control rooms of Europe’s most ambitious missions to the vast frontiers of the cosmos. With the insight of an engineer and the passion of a storyteller, he reveals the challenges, triumphs, and human spirit driving our quest to understand the universe.

NASA’s Perseverance rover recently detected what it calls a “potential biosignature.”
How do you, as someone with decades of mission-operations experience, interpret such findings? What would you look for before calling something a real biosignature?

The question of what to define biosignature is a very complex one and, not being myself a biochemist, I am not qualified to judge it. Important is however how to interpret this type of public announcements. You used the right words in defining the recent discovery of scientists using the Perseverance data “a potential biosignature”. This means that the minerals identified in this case could be generated by biological processes (and therefore indicate the presence in the past of microbial life) but also by normal chemical processes. It is the same issue of the search for methane in Mars’ atmosphere, as this gas can be generated by biological but also geological processes. In the case of the recent discovery I think the importance aspect is that it has been identified in a location which was considered promising for the search of life. And also, perhaps most importantly, that Perseverance has collected samples in the same area, which, if ever returned to Earth, could be analysed more thoroughly in the labs on our planet. It is for this reason that NASA activated its powerful public relation machine, hitting the press across the world. Given the (technical and financial) difficulties the Mars Sample Return mission is suffering, their hope is that news like this could bring back the attention to this important mission and perhaps contribute to saving it.  

ESA has its own legacy on Mars — from Mars Express to the ExoMars/ Rosalind Franklin rover.
How does Europe see its role in complementing or challenging NASA’s leadership in Martian exploration?

If you exclude Mars Express - that apart from a NASA co-funded instrument plus ground station and navigation support (support that NASA has in the meantime withdrawn already years ago) is an entirely European project – all ESA programmes related to Mars today are heavily dependent on cooperation with the US. ExoMars TGO is carrying a US radio for the communications with the surface, and NASA is using the ESA spacecraft as the most important data relay for the communications with their rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. The second ExoMars mission, that aims to finally land the Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars by the beginning of the next decade, after ESA has blocked all cooperation with Russia is now heavily relying on essential NASA contributions. Finally, the Mars Sample Return mission, in which ESA plays a very important role by providing the Earth Return Orbiter to bring back the samples from Mars orbit to Earth, is a joint NASA-ESA programme.

It is clear that ESA, with its limited budget for space science and exploration, cannot afford to have its own Mars programme and even less to compete with NASA. We are bound to international cooperation, which is not a bad thing per se, on the contrary. Perhaps what we should learn from the past is not to put all eggs in one basket, the NASA one, and maintain and expand cooperation with all other spacefaring countries. 

ESA recently paused and restructured parts of its ExoMars program after Russia’s withdrawal.
What lessons from your time at ESOC and Rosetta might help Europe maintain operational independence in future planetary missions?

I am not sure that maintaining operational independence is a priority in the field of space exploration. Objectives are getting more and more ambitious, missions more and more complex and expensive. It is more efficient to join forces with other Countries, putting together programmes where each partner contributes according to its best expertise. The problem remains how not to lock oneself with one single partner, keeping a broad spectrum of cooperations. ESA has always been very good at that, and this allowed us to react rapidly to sudden dropouts of partners. ExoMars is a very good example: started as a cooperation ESA-NASA, in 2012 NASA suddenly and unilaterally withdrew, leaving ESA in deep troubles. But we reacted quickly and established a new cooperation with Russia. Then in 2022 it was our turn to withdraw unilaterally from this cooperation, which forced us back into a new cooperation with NASA. Given the current instability in the USA and the uncertainties about the path NASA intends to follow, not only ExoMars is in danger, but also other cooperations like the one on Envision. We should therefore be ready to react to a potential new problem with the USA by strengthening our partnerships with India, China, Japan and exploring alternatives with them.

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