The first stage of a European mission to Mars is still limping towards a 2016 launch, even though the European Space Agency (ESA) has not yet raised full funding for the mission, Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s director general, told Nature today at a global space-exploration conference.

The suite of Mars missions — which is to include an orbiter as well as landed elements following launches in 2016 and 2018 — was originally a joint plan with NASA. In that formulation, a rover, launched in 2018, would have marked the beginning of a Mars sample-return mission architecture.

But NASA pulled out after the administration of US President Barack Obama deemed the plan too costly a commitment. Picking up the pieces after the divorce, Dordain was able to keep the mission alive in part by bringing Russia into the fold. Russia will contribute Proton rockets for the launches in 2016 and 2018. But Dordain says he is still €350 million (US$440 million) short of the estimated €1.2-billion cost of the mission.

He is trying to raise those funds in multiple ways, including asking existing member states to pay more, and also through the recruitment of new ESA member-states. Although he is not yet confident enough to say the mission will go ahead, he also is unwilling to give up. He hopes to have more funding commitments lined up before an ESA meeting next month. “I cannot in three months re-plan everything we had built up in three years with NASA,” he says. “I need time.”

Image credit: ESA