Friday, 21 October 2016

Europe Lost Contact with Mars Lander 1 Minute Before Touchdown By Megan Gannon, Space.com Contributor




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After a suspenseful night waiting for a signal from the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander, the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed today that the spacecraft went silent less than a minute before it was set to reach the Martian surface Wednesday (Oct. 19).
ESA mission managers said this morning (Oct. 20) that they need more time to understand what went wrong with Schiaparelli, and to figure out exactly where and in what condition the test lander ended up. But theExoMars team was optimistic that the capsule had collected enough data during its descent to set the stage for the next phase of the mission: the planned 2020 launch of a life-hunting ExoMars rover.
"The test has yielded a huge amount of data," David Parker, ESA's director of human spaceflight and robotic exploration, said at a news conference early this morning. "It gives us a lot of confidence for the future. We need to understand what happened in the last few seconds before the planned landing, and that is likely to take some time." [In Photos: Europe's Schiaparelli Mars Landing Day]
The Schiaparelli Mars lander deploys its parachute in this artist's illustration.
The Schiaparelli Mars lander deploys its parachute in this artist's illustration.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
The European Space Agency's ExoMars project involves an orbiter, lander and rover, launched on two separate Proton rockets.
The European Space Agency's ExoMars project involves an orbiter, lander and rover, launched on two separate Proton rockets.
Credit: Details of the ExoMars orbiter, lander and rover.





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