European Mars lander shows no sign of life
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THRUSTERS intended to slow a European lander as it neared Mars on Wednesday fired for less time than expected before contact with the vehicle was lost, leaving scientists uncertain whether it touched down safely or broke apart.
The Schiaparelli probe, part of a broader mission to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, was to test technologies during the descent and on the surface for a rover scientists hope to send to Mars in 2020.
Its descent marked only the second European attempt to land a craft on Mars, but it has shown no signs of life since it stopped transmitting around 50 seconds before Wednesday’s planned touchdown.
“We’ve had two overflights (by Mars orbiters) and there was no signal,” the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo said yesterday.
The disc-shaped 577kg Schiaparelli is part of the Russian-European ExoMars programme that is seeking signs of life. The primary part of the mission this year, bringing the Schiaparelli lander’s mothership into orbit around Mars, was meanwhile a success.
That craft, called Trace Gas Orbiter, will use an atmospheric probe to sniff out methane and other gases around Mars linked to organic life. It will also act as a data relay station for the rover, which is due to follow in 2020.
Landing on Mars, Earth’s neighbor and at its closest some 56 million km away, is a notoriously difficult task that has thwarted most Russian efforts and given NASA trouble as well.
The US space agency had a setback of its own on Wednesday. Its Juno spacecraft lost its main computer and science instruments shortly before it was due to make an orbital pass near Jupiter, scuttling highly anticipated close-up observations of the largest planet in the solar system. Schiaparelli is supposed to test new technologies for a rover that will be the first with the ability to both move across the surface of Mars and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.
Scientists said they had received data from the lander covering its entry into the Martian atmosphere and the deployment of its heat shield and parachute.
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