Schiaparelli Mars Lander is Probably Destroyed After Thrusters Failed

Europe’s Schiaparelli Mars lander may be lying dead on the surface of the red planet after its thrusters failed.

The thrusters were supposed to fire for 30 seconds to slow the lander down so that it could touch down gently and protect the sensitive equipment on board.

However it has been confirmed that they fired for just three or four seconds before unexpectedly switching off in the final phase of the six minute descent.

Lost

All contact was lost with Schiaparelli in the final minute of the descent and scientists at the European Space Agency are still analysing data sent from the lander to discover exactly what happened.

At this stage it is not certain that the lander was destroyed on impact but it is certainly feared that it did not survive the landing.

Everything was going fine with the descent phase until the final minute or so.

Schiaparelli successfully separated from its mothership the Trace Gas Orbiter, entered Mars’s atmosphere as planned and that its parachute was deployed as normal.

Martian

“From this point on, the lander has definitely not behaved exactly as we had expected,” Andrea Accomazzo, head of solar and planetary operations, told a news conference today.

“When we put this hardware in the Martian environment, the spacecraft didn’t behave exactly as we had expected. Now it is a matter to analyze why.

“We are not in a position yet to determine the dynamic condition under which the lander touched the ground.

“We are still processing the data from the descent and (when that is done) we will know whether it could have survived structurally or not.”

Valuable

Even if Schiaparelli did not survive the landing it was recording valuable atmospheric data on its descent to Mars and scientists will be able to analyze that.

Schiaparelli is part of the European-Russian ExoMars program to explore the red planet.

The Trace Gas Orbiter, another key part of the program,  is now successfully in orbit around the planet so all was not lost with the Mars mission.

“Following yesterday’s events we have an impressive orbiter around Mars ready for science and for relay support for the ExoMars rover mission in 2020,” said Jan Wörner, ESA’s Director General.

Data

“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.”

David Parker, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration, said: “In terms of the Schiaparelli test module, we have data coming back that allow us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur.

“From the engineering standpoint, it’s what we want from a test, and we have extremely valuable data to work with. We will have an enquiry board to dig deeper into the data and we cannot speculate further at this time.”

 

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