First color photos of the European Mars lander's crash site taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were revealed a month after the spacecraft's unsuccessful attempt to land on the Red Planet.
The Schiaparelli lander, alongside the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), is part of the ExoMars mission, a joint project by the Russian Federal Space Agency and European Space Agency. The ExoMars mission is still on, despite the crash of Schiaparelli lander, as the TGO is still orbiting Mars successfully.
Capturing The Schiaparelli Crash Site
NASA's new high-resolution cameras — equipped with three filters — captured the parts of Schiaparelli module and its crash site creating colored photos, which were revealed on Nov. 1. The newly released images appeared facing west unlike other images that appeared facing east, giving a contrast geometric viewing option.
The white spots that appeared in the dark background were found to be real objects and not "noise" imaging. A fuzzy patch seen in the color image with dark streaks next to the crater is believed to be the surface material disturbed by the explosion of Schiaparelli fuel tank or so.
Schiaparelli arrived on the Red Planet in the Meridiani Planum region on Oct. 19 when the TGO began orbiting Mars. It was reported that the TGO will start making its observation and taking pictures during two of its elliptical orbits starting Nov. 20.
What Went Down
As far as the crash is concerned, it appeared earlier that while the spacecraft was slowing down, the parachutes weren't able to slow down the craft due to Mars' thin atmosphere. However, the crash seemed to have happened because of the lander's onboard computers.
The computers mistook that the landing site was lower than it really was and eventually shut off the thrusters and deployed the parachute too early. As a matter of fact, the mission to Mars isn't a cakewalk as till date only seven spacecraft have landed successfully in Mars and all of them belong to NASA.
Meanwhile the European Space Agency has noted in a press release that further imaging is set to happen in two weeks and it will be exciting to see what changes have happened in the meantime.
"The images may provide more pieces of the puzzle as to what happened to Schiaparelli as it approached the martian surface. Following its successful atmospheric entry and subsequent slowing due to heatshield and parachute deceleration, the internal investigation into the root cause of the problems encountered by Schiaparelli in the latter stages of its six-minute descent continues," said the report.
