Schiaparelli Mars Lander Feared Lost While Descending on Mars

Schiaparelli’s robot attempted to land on Mars surface but a minute before it touched down, the robot’s radio signals dropped.

Satellites currently orbiting Mars attempted to check the status of the probe. An American satellite also tried calling out to Schiaparelli to get it to respond, so far without success.

The European Space Agency fear’s that the robot crashed and has been destroyed. However, it is still too early to assume the probe’s outcome.

Schiaparelli’s engineers will be conducting “fault trees” to shed some light as per why communication was lost. The procedure will also tell them what they can do to proceed with the mission. This test might take several days to complete.

The Schiaparelli “mothership” also comes with a Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to examine Martian atmosphere. As the probe descends down the surface, the TGO was placing itself into a parking ellipse around Mars. That telemetry, however, could not hold essential clues as to what happen before the expected touchdown.

Schiaparelli’s engineers and ESA experts will analyse the downlinked data overnight. They will hold a press conference at 10:00 local time (09:00 BST; 08:00 GMT) on Thursday.

“People will spend the night looking at this data. I’m pretty confident that this telemetry will tell us what action was interrupted when we lost the communications. I would say we have a very good chance tomorrow morning to either know that the lander is lost or to know what attempts we can make to recover it,” said Paolo Ferri, head of mission operation at ESA’s control centre in Germany.

If the Schiaparelli’s fate is really unlucky, the TGO would still proceed in its mission to orbit Mars’s atmosphere.

The mission, formally called ExoMars 2016, is a key part of the international joint endeavor of Russian Space Agency (Roscos) and ESA. The TGO would spend most of its time studying the behavior of gasses such as methane, water-vapor and nitrogen dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.

Gases such as Methane could hold vital clues about Mars’s current state and may even give clues to the existence of life on the planet.

The spacecraft’s calculated fast descent has to be just the right speed, or else it would run smashing into the Martian surface.

Schiaparelli is equipped with parachute, heat-shield and rocket thrusters in order to slow its approach to the surface.

If the robot is later confirmed as lost, it would be another major disappointment to ESA which recently suffered failure with Beagle-2 on Mars last 2003.

Six-wheeled-rover for planned 2021 mission

Official’s said Schiaparelli has always been considered as the agency’s technology demonstrator. The project was meant to provide the learning experience to land a more ambitious six-wheeled rover on Mars in 2021.

Professor Jan Woerner, ESA’s Director General said, “this is typical for a test”. He added, “we did this in order to get data on how to land on Mars with European technology. Therefore, all the data we will get this night will be used to understand how to manage the next landing when we go with the rover.”

 

The six-wheeler rover is expected to use the same technology as Schiaparelli. This   includes a doppler radar to calculate its distance to the surface while descending. Furthermore, it carries a similar navigation system and control algorithms.

The budget of the six-wheeler rover is not yet secure. If Schiaparelli is indeed lost, ESA officials would have to work harder to explain to member states why the extra investment would be worthy.

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