ESA Euronews: ExoMars at Mars

Scientists and engineers on the ExoMars project had their hearts in their mouths as the ExoMars mission reached the red planet, with the Schiaparelli probe going missing in action at the end of its descent just as the TGO mothership swept into a perfectly timed orbit.

The rollercoaster ride of arrival at Mars is the first installment in this ambitious Russian and European project that aims for the first time to directly search for signs of life on Mars.

The plight of Schiaparelli remains unclear. It is certainly on the Martian surface, but may well have hit the red dust much harder then engineers had planned, and nothing has been heard from it since.

Data relayed during the lander's descent shows the initial high-speed entry to the Martian atmosphere went well, with the heatshield slowing the craft and the parachute deploying. However once the back heat shield and parachute were ejected the flow of events did not go to plan.

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[pacg]

Can't believe they're decided to go ahead with ExoMars-2020 with a very valuable rover vehicle inside to land there, without previously sending another TEST lander, and doing this until we're successful landing safely on Mars using that technology (which we are using to land the rover) Maybe it's unavoidable to postpone 2020 ESA-Exomars landing to a later date, but it's better than losing also the rover...

[johanrosenfeld]

Bonsoir à tous, Johan, ne t'inquiète pas, c'est officiel la mission Exomars Franklin Rosalind de l'ESA se sépare de Roscosmos à la suite de l'invasion de l'Ukraine par La Russie et il y aura quels agences spatiales repreneurs.

Merci cordialement, Johan.

[steelmonkey]

Floppy disc drives, landers without legs, "this" failure "won't effect how the 2020 rover mission is conducted." These people clearly don't learn from experience. More failure on the way.