A new image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a bright spot that may be a parachute of ESA’s ExoMars Schiaparelli module, and a larger dark spot interpreted as resulting from the impact of the lander itself following a much longer free fall than planned.
This image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 20, 2016. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.
Schiaparelli entered the Martian atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (7:42 a.m. PDT, 2:42 p.m. GMT, 4:42 p.m. CET) on October 19 for its 6-min descent to the surface.
Early indications from both the radio signals captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, India, and from orbit by ESA’s Mars Express, suggested the lander had successfully completed most steps of its descent.
This included the deceleration through the atmosphere, and the parachute and heat shield deployment.
But the signals recorded by both GMRT and Mars Express stopped shortly before the module was expected to touchdown on the surface.
In the meantime, MRO’s low-resolution CTX camera took a picture of the expected touchdown site in Meridiani Planum on October 20 as part of a planned imaging campaign.
The image shows two features on the Martian surface when compared to an image from the same camera taken in May this year.
One of the features is bright and can be associated with the 39-foot (12 m) diameter parachute used in the second stage of Schiaparelli’s descent, after the initial heat shield entry.
The parachute and the associated back shield were released from the module prior to the final phase, during which its nine thrusters should have slowed it to a standstill just above the surface.
The landing site of the Schiaparelli module within the predicted landing ellipse in a mosaic of images from the Context Camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Thermal Emission Imaging System on NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. Below the main image is a pair of before-and-after images, taken by the CTX camera on May 29, 2016 (left) and October 20, 2016 (right), respectively. The 20 October image shows two new features appearing following the arrival of the Schiaparelli test lander module on the Martian surface on October 19. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Arizona State University.
The other feature is a fuzzy dark patch roughly 49 x 131 feet (15 x 40 m) in size and about 3,280 feet (one km) north of the parachute.
This is interpreted as arising from the impact of the Schiaparelli module itself following a much longer free fall than planned, after the thrusters were switched off prematurely.
Estimates are that Schiaparelli dropped from a height of between 1.2 and 2.5 miles (2 – 4 km), therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 186 mph (300 km/h).
The relatively large size of the feature would then arise from disturbed surface material. It is also possible that the lander exploded on impact, as its thruster propellant tanks were likely still full.
The exact mode of anomaly onboard Schiaparelli is still under investigation.
The position of the dark mark shows that the lander impacted 3.4 miles (5.4 km) west of its intended landing point, well within the nominal 62 x 9.3 mile (100 x 15 km) landing ellipse.
Meanwhile, the mission team continues to decode the data extracted from the recording of Schiaparelli descent signals recorded by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in order to establish correlations with the measurements made with GMRT and Mars Express.
A substantial amount of extremely valuable Schiaparelli engineering data were relayed back to the TGO during the descent and is being analyzed by engineers day and night.
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This article is based on a press-release from the European Space Agency.
