As you may have heard, there's a war going on between Russia and Ukraine. This has disrupted a great many things, and perhaps ultimately the fate of a Mars-bound rover is not the most important thing in the world. But the European ExoMars rover was supposed to look for Martian life, and now it's going to be several years before it can do that. And that's too bad.
So what happened? Well, the European Space Agency and Russia worked together on the ExoMars rover, and while the rover itself is done, the ESA was relying on a Russian rocket, the Russian launching sit in Kazakhstan to get it to Mars, and a Russian landing platform to actually get the rover on the surface. The launch was supposed to happen in September this year, but with the sanctions and ESA pulling out of all cooperation with Russia, that's not going to happen. So, when will this rover launch? We can only send rockets to Mars every couple years, so the next launch window is in 2024, but the split seems unlikely to have been mended by then.
Realistically, the ESA doesn't think the rover will be launched until 2028, which will give Europe enough time to build their own launching/landing platform. This is for a rover that was originally supposed to be launched in 2018. Delays and missions into outer space are not strangers to each other, but a decade is a lot. The dual U.S./Europe Mars sample return mission will fly before then, rendering the rover mildly pointless. It may as well go, since it's been built, but it won't be as groundbreaking as originally hoped.
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