The European Mars Lander Schiaparelli lost contact with mission control about 1 minute before it was supposed to touchdown on the surface of planet Mars on Wednesday, Oct. 19.
Now, images from an orbiting NASA spacecraft offer an answer to why the lander has remained silent. The photos suggest that the ExoMars lander crashed on the red planet.
Newly released photos taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter appear to have captured the gravesite of the lost probe, which seems to confirm what members of the ExoMars team initially suspected, that Schiaparelli crashed while attempting to touch down on the Martian surface.
The photos taken by the NASA orbiter on Oct. 20 showed two changes to the landscape, a white speck and a dark blotch, which are now being interpreted as the parachute and crash site of Schiaparelli.
"One of the features is bright and can be associated with the 12-m diameter parachute used in the second stage of Schiaparelli's descent, after the initial heat shield entry," the European Space Agency said in a statement released on Friday.
"The other new feature is a fuzzy dark patch roughly 15 by 40 metres in size and about 1 km north of the parachute. This is interpreted as arising from the impact of the Schiaparelli module itself."
ESA said that the lander may have dropped from a height ranging between 2 and 4 kilometers, which resulted in an impact with considerable speed of more than 300 kph. It is also possible that Schiaparelli exploded on impact because its thruster propellant tanks were still likely full. ESA, however, said that these are just preliminary interpretations pending further analysis.
HiRISE, the high resolution camera onboard the MRO, will take a closer look at the features suspected to be the remains of the lost lander next week.
Despite interests in the red planet, landing a probe on Mars is notoriously difficult due to the thin and dusty atmosphere of the planet. Based on what scientists have pieced together so far, the European lander suffered problems during the last 50 seconds of its descent through the harsh Martian atmosphere.
This is not the first ill-fated mission to the red planet. The Beagle probe, which landed on Mars more than a decade ago, also failed to properly deploy its solar panels, which prevented it from functioning.
With Schiaparelli's loss, only two spacecraft are still currently doing scientific work on the surface of Mars: Curiosity and Opportunity.
