ExoMars Crash Landing

A European Space Agency craft that was supposed to land on the Red Planet this week appears to have crash-landed shortly after it entered the martian atmosphere on Oct. 19.

ESA lost contact with the landing module and is currently analyzing data from its mothership, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), to determine its fate.

In a blog post on Friday, the agency said the capsule dropped from a height of between two and four kilometers (1.2 and 2.5 miles), which would result in an impact speed of nearly 200mph. ESA said that it's also possible the lander exploded on impact.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter apparently photographed the crash landing. ESA said the images could show a large parachute used in the second stage of descent, after the initial heat-shield-protected entry phase.

After the parachute separated, the final descent phase was supposed to commence, which involves nine thrusters slowing the module to a near standstill just before it reached Mars' surface. Another photo shows a dark area that is likley to be the module's crash site.

Based on the photos, the ESA said it's likely that the thrusters switched off prematurely, resulting in a much longer free fall that resulted in a crash.

In mid-March, the first ExoMars mission launched from Kazakhstan en route to Mars. This first interplanetary package consisted of the TGO probe and the lander that crashed this week, named Schiaparelli.

The crash landing wasn't a complete failure, though, because the module recorded valuable engineering data during the descent, as it was designed to do. The ESA hopes to use that data for the second part of the ExoMars mission, which is scheduled to deliver a rover to the Red Planet's surface in 2020.