Mars probe hit ground 鈥榯oo fast鈥
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IMAGES taken by a NASA Mars orbiter indicate that Europe’s ill-fated Mars lander left a small crater on the Red Planet’s surface, backing up scientists’ theory that the craft hit the ground at high speed.
The disc-shaped, 577-kilogram Schiaparelli probe, part of the Russian-European ExoMars program to search for evidence of life on Mars, was destroyed last week when its thrusters stopped firing too soon during its descent.
It was only the second European attempt to land a craft on Mars, after a failed mission by the Britain’s Beagle 2 in 2003.
Scientists believe that the Schiaparelli lander plummeted to the ground from a height of 2km to 4km, hitting the ground at more than 300 kilometers per hour.
High-resolution pictures taken by the US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a dark spot, 2.4 meters across, at the crash site.
The European Space Agency (ESA) said this was consistent with a crater made by an object of the lander’s size crashing at a speed of several hundred kilometers per hour.
ESA’s scientists estimate that the crater is about 50 centimeters deep but are hoping for more details from further images to be taken by NASA’s orbiter in the coming weeks, ESA said.
But the space agency said NASA’s images also showed asymmetric dark markings around the crash site that were more difficult to interpret.
Schiaparelli was traveling much slower than a meteoroid would, having used a heat shield and parachute to slow down after entering the atmosphere of Mars.
One possible explanation is that the lander’s fuel tanks could have exploded in one direction, throwing debris from the planet’s surface.
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