Another spacecraft likely bites the Martian dust
The Mars gremlin has likely struck again. The fate of a European spacecraft looked increasingly grim Thursday as engineers pored over new data from the craft’s descent to the Martian surface.
Rocket jets were supposed to cushion the Schiaparelli lander’s touchdown Wednesday, but they fired for only a few seconds rather than the planned 30 seconds.
There were also indications that the spacecraft’s parachute and rear heat shield detached earlier than expected. The available evidence, though incomplete, indicates “a soft landing did not occur,” David Parker of the European Space Agency, which operated Schiaparelli, said Thursday.
A NASA Mars orbiter will listen for signals from the lander Thursday as will an Earth-based telescope and Europe’s Mars Express orbiter. “If there is a signal coming, we would pick it up for sure,” said Andrea Accomazzo of the European Space Agency. He also said engineers received enough data from Schiaparelli to diagnose what befell it.
Since the Space Age began, roughly half of the spacecraft bound for Martian orbit or the Martian surface have met untimely demises. Only seven landers — all built and operated by NASA — survived the perilous trip to the Mars landscape with faculties intact. No country other than the United States has succeeded in landing a craft safely on Mars.
Vehicles that have met disaster in their daring aim for Martian soil have burned up in the atmosphere, smashed into the surface or missed the planet entirely. Schiaparelli now looks to have joined those ranks, though it’s not clear how fast it was moving when it impacted the red soil of Mars.
For much of Wednesday, it looked like Schiaparelli would succeed where others had failed.
As the lander descended toward the Red Planet, a giant telescope in India picked up signals suggesting Schiaparelli abruptly reduced its speed, an expected response to the opening of its parachute. Later signals established the parachute ripped away from the craft, revealing nine thrusters that were supposed to slow the craft even further.
But then the Indian telescope lost the signal, as did Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft.
Not all was lost, though. Mission personnel were jubilant over the Trace Gas Orbiter’s successful arrival into Martian orbit. The orbiter, which launched with Schiaparelli in tow in March, will sniff out gases such as methane that may have been generated by living things.
The orbiter also offers scientists hope for squeezing information out of Schiaparelli if it is not recovered. The lander was supposed to collect unprecedented data on the Martian atmosphere during its descent and beam it to its sidekick in orbit, and there’s a “very good chance” it did just that, said Colin Wilson of the University of Oxford, a scientist involved with Schiaparelli.
On the other hand, the Schiaparelli instrument that Wilson personally oversaw wasn’t scheduled to collect data until the lander was safely on the Martian surface, a now-iffy scenario. This would not be Wilson’s first disappointment: he planned to collect data from the same kind of instrument on Britain’s Beagle 2 Mars lander, which landed on Mars in 2003 but failed to make contact with Earth.
“It’s like getting slapped twice,” Wilson said. “But we have an orbiter that's gone into orbit around Mars … and it’s going to last for years,” whereas the lander was intended to survive only a few days.
Schiaparelli was designed to test technologies for a much larger roving laboratory scheduled for launch in 2020. Its disappearance puts the timing and design of that mission in doubt.
“Mars for many reasons is a very difficult target,” said Olivier Witasse of the European Space Agency. “Success or failure, we have to continue and learn from that.”