Mars lander falls silent: Has it been lost?
Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) are using Thursday鈥檚 possibly failed landing on Mars as a learning experience.
The Schiaparelli Mars lander, named for the Italian astronomer who made the first maps of Mars in the 19th聽century, had a considerable job to do. The 1,272-pound vehicle had to travel , reaching Mars鈥� thin atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour, and then slow down enough as it passed through atmospheric drag to deploy a parachute, landing softly on the planet鈥檚 surface.
And all of this went according to plan, until the parachute was released more than half a mile above the Red Planet鈥檚 surface. The lander鈥檚 signal went quiet 50 seconds before landing, leaving ESA scientists to wonder if the probe crash-landed.
If the Schiaparelli probe had landed successfully on Mars, it would mark a first for Europe, which has never landed a probe on the Red Planet. The United States, however, recently celebrated the fourth birthday of NASA鈥檚 Curiosity after the rover landed on Mars in 2012.
Despite the disappointing ending, scientists are staying positive.聽
"Yes, I am happy," Jan Woerner, ESA鈥檚 Director General, . "The engineers are doing great work, but you still need a bit of luck to succeed."聽
"There are a number of things that went right," Jonathan McDowell, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, . "They successfully navigated to the top of the Martian atmosphere, the heat shield separated correctly, the parachute 鈥� and supersonic Martian parachutes are a really tricky thing to get right 鈥� worked, the separation event of all the different pieces coming off seems to have worked. So they've ticked off three or four of the five or six pieces that are needed to make a successful descent."
However, the ExoMars program, a collaboration between the ESA and Russia鈥檚 space agency, had high expectations for the Schiaparelli lander.聽
Schiaparelli鈥檚 landing was planned to set the stage for part two of the ExoMars mission: to land a six-wheeled rover (similar to NASA鈥檚 Curiosity) in 2020. Because of the future rover鈥檚 $330 million price tag, ExoMars leaders were hoping Schiaparelli鈥檚 success would reassure investors.
But Mr. Woerner isn鈥檛 worried.聽
"Schiaparelli's primary role was to test European landing technologies," . "Recording the data during the descent was part of that, and it is important we can learn what happened, in order to prepare for the future."
And for now, scientists will study the data that Schiaparelli was able to submit 鈥� equivalent to 400,000 pages of information.聽
"From the engineering standpoint, it鈥檚 what we want from a test, and we have extremely valuable data to work with," added David Parker, ESA鈥檚 Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration. "We will have an enquiry board to dig deeper into the data and we cannot speculate further at this time."
It's possible the rover may still be located.
"When we put it in the Martian environment, the spacecraft didn鈥檛 behave exactly as expected," Andrea Accomazzo, ESA鈥檚 spacecraft operations manager told . "It might take quite some time before we are able to locate it."
