The Schiaparelli lander from the TGO orbiter [Trace Gas Orbiter] will land on Mars on 19 October 2016. The Trace Gas Orbiter will remain in orbit around Mars. This of course is the ESA's second attempt to put a lander on Mars, Beagle being the first. http://exploration.esa.int/mars/58307-the-hazards-of-landing-on-mars/ Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/European_lander_starts_3-day_descent_to_Mars_surface_ESA_999.html European lander starts 3-day descent to Mars surface: ESABy Mari�tte Le RouxParis (AFP) Oct 16, 2016 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Facts behind Europe and Russia's ExoMars missionParis (AFP) Oct 16, 2016 - Europe will send a test lander Sunday on a one-way trip to the Martian surface, a key step in its joint ExoMars project with Russia to search for life on the Red Planet. Some facts about the mission: What's in a name? ExoMars gets its name from "exobiology" -- the science of analysing the odds and likely nature of life on other planets. Schiaparelli, the lander, was named after a 19th century Italian astronomer who had observed lines, which he called "canali", on Mars through a telescope This was mistranslated into English as canal (instead of channel), which cause many to imagine vast irrigation networks built by intelligent creatures. Better telescopes in the 20th century killed off that legend. In numbers: The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft, which will analyse our neighbour's atmosphere, measures 3.5 metres by two metres by two metres (11.5 feet by 6.5 feet by 6.5 feet). It has solar wings spanning 17.5 metres, tip to tip. With the Schiaparelli lander on board, it travelled 496 million kilometres (308 million miles) to get to Mars. On Sunday, the TGO will release Schiaparelli from a distance of one million kilometres from the Red Planet's surface. The paddling pool-sized lander, 1.6 metres wide, will test entry and landing gear for a subsequent rover to be launched in 2020. Why? Scientists believe Mars once hosted liquid water -- a key ingredient for life as we know it. While the Martian surface is too dry, cold and radiation-blasted to sustain life today, this may have been a different story 3.5 billion years ago when the Red Planet's climate was warmer and wetter. Science has long abandoned the hunt for little green men, though. Life, if any exists, is likely underground -- away from harmful ultraviolet and cosmic rays -- and in the form of single-celled microbes. Primitive or not, it would be the first time humans ever observe life on a planet other than Earth. The mission will also seek to learn more about geological processes on Mars, and about the sand storms that change the face of the planet with their seasonal violence. How? TGO will taste Martian gases, looking specifically for methane. Methane is important because it may be a clue to life -- on Earth it is mostly produced by biological processes. Previous missions had already picked up traces of methane in Mars' atmosphere, but the TGO has much more sophisticated tools with which scientists hope to tell whether the gas is biological or geological in origin. Methane can, theoretically, also be created by underground volcanoes. The rover will drill into Mars to look for evidence of buried, extinct life, or even live microbic activity. Who? While diplomatic ties between Europe and Russia may be under strain, they collaborate closely on ExoMars -- a shared project of Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA). Europe has budgeted 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) for the mission America's NASA, which was due to contribute $1.4 billion, pulled out due to budget cuts in 2012, causing Europe to turn to Russia. Moscow agreed to provide launcher rockets in exchange for science instruments onboard the craft. The lander, Schiaparelli, is European, and the rover will be too. The platform housing the rover and its science lab will be Russian. Prestige: "We need to demonstrate our ability to do things on our own," ESA senior scientist Mark McCaughrean told AFP of the European quest. "It's partly about proving that Europe has the capability and the will and the power to pull these projects together." SOURCE: European Space Agency (ESA) more at link:
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-to-set-schiaparelli-probe-on-red-planet-live Mars landing: ESA declare success despite Schiaparelli probe's silence - as it happened ExoMars Trace Gas orbiter successfully positioned, but engineers will work overnight to decode the reason why probe’s signal failed prior to landing: So that’s it for today. ESA will make their next official statements about the Trace Gas Orbiter and the Schiaparelli lander at 9am UK time tomorrow. For the TGO, everything is peachy. The spacecraft is in the expected orbit and functioning normally. For Schiaparelli things don’t look so good. The signal was received for a good part of its journey through the Martian atmosphere but was lost before the lander reached the surface. This is confirmed by both the radio telescope tracking from Earth and the MarsExpress spacecraft, which was recording the descent from orbit. Although it would be a disappointment for the landing to fail at the last moment, the most important thing was that it happens now and not in 2020 when ESA send their life-detecting rover to the surface. So all in all, today was a success. A fantastic new science mission is now in orbit around Mars and the landing test returned invaluable data for the engineers to make the 2020 landing safer. And that seems like a good place to leave the blog. Thanks for joining us today. It’s been a good one for space exploration.
Sadly, it's starting to sound like it was lost while trying to enter Mars' thin atmosphere. http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/10/19/exomars-mission-status-center/ Apparently the Europeans have plans for a rover in 2020. Hopefully they can examine the results of the NASA rovers and figure out what needs more investigation and include instruments to follow up on those things. I like the idea of the European space agency having the ability to pull off big complex projects on its own.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ít doesn't look good as of 7hrs ago [0900hrs EDST 20/10/2016 Agreed, the more the merrier I say.
The ESA is saying that the lander survived its entry, successfully ejected its heat shield and released its parachutes, before contact was lost. So it sounds to me like the parachutes didn't properly deploy or something. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...nder-likely-crashed-descent-180960866/?no-ist The ESA's earlier Beagle Mars lander was lost on descent in a similar way but was found in photo images years later, sitting on the Martian surface. In that case its solar panels never deployed and it never had sufficient power to call home. (If something was snagging on something, that's a problem that a human astronaut could fix with one hand in 30 seconds.) There's some concern since the next ESA project is their Mars rover in 2020, which plans to carry a drill to drill down 6 feet under the surface to look for microbial life down there. The ESA wanted at have at least one successful Mars landing on their resume before they launch that more ambitious project.
It sounds like they might have almost made it. They say the radar altimeter activated, the lander separated from its parachutes as planned and the final descent thrusters activated. That's when contact was lost. http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/10/19/exomars-mission-status-center/ Maybe a thruster exploded. Or maybe the lander is sitting on Mars as planned and an antenna didn't deploy or something. I guess that's why they are still trying to contact it. It's frustrating to think that it might just be a small problem, but nobody can get up there to fix it.
http://www.space.com/34472-exomars-mars-lander-crash-site-photos.html Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This image by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows what appears to be the ExoMars lander's parachute (bright spot at bottom) and the impact site of the lander itself (dark patch at top). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Europe's ExoMars lander apparently crashed on the Red Planet, and an orbiting NASA spacecraft has spotted its grave, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.
