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hubie writes:

Updating a recent story, the Schiaparelli technology demonstration lander suffered an anomaly during its descent to the surface of Mars on 19 October. The lander was to continuously send data through the entire landing process, but contact was lost at some point during the descent. Analysis of the telemetry showed an early jettison of its parachute. Its parent ship and main science mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter, inserted into the proper orbit and is working as expected.

From The BBC article:

Telemetry data recovered from the probe during its descent indicates that its parachute was jettisoned too early.

The rockets it was supposed to use to bring itself to a standstill just above the ground also appeared to fire for too short a time.

[...] In addition, the Americans will use one of their satellites at Mars to image the targeted landing zone to see if they can detect any hardware. Although, the chances are slim because the probe is small.

For the moment, all Esa has to work with is the relatively large volume of engineering data Schiaparelli managed to transmit back to the "mothership" that dropped it off at Mars - the Trace Gas Orbiter.

This shows that everything was fine as the probe entered the atmosphere. Its heatshield appeared to do the job of slowing the craft, and the parachute opened as expected to further decelerate the robot.

But it is at the end of the parachute phase that the data indicates unusual behaviour.

[...] Many scientists here at mission control have taken all this information to mean one thing - that the probe crashed at high speed. It is likely it went into freefall a kilometre or two above the surface.

Officially, though, Esa experts say they cannot at this stage fully interpret what happened until a velocity profile for the probe is properly reconstructed.

Original Submission