ESA Lander Prepares For Historic Mars Landing

This is exciting! In just a few days the Schiaparelli Lander will be landing if all goes well. The mission will be searching for past and present life on the red planet. I hope it will be landing in an area that hasn't been explored yet.

There is also an atmospheric probe that will measure gases such as methane. I hope our experts can share more about this mission such as where it's landing and how soon might we get pictures if it's successful .

www.huffingtonpost.com...

FRANKFURT - A Mars lander is due to leave its mothership on Sunday and head toward the red planet’s surface to test technologies for Europe’s planned first Mars rover, which will search for signs of past and present life. After a seven-month journey from Earth as part of the European-Russian ExoMars program, the Schiaparelli lander is expected to separate from spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) at 10:42 a.m. EDT and start a three-day descent to the surface.

The primary goal of ExoMars is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. The current spacecraft carries an atmospheric probe to study trace gases such as methane, around the planet. Scientists believe that methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life, could stem from micro-organisms that either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the planet’s surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive.

www.theguardian.com...

This isn't a rover; It will be stationary once it lands, and will only operate for a few days. For information on things like these it's best to go right to the source.

Still exciting though.

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

Oops. Thanks for correcting me on that. Yes, even so, it's still exciting that we will get new info on the atmosphere. Hope it lands safely.

Looking forward to a successful landing. If everything goes well, it will be the first successful European lander on Mars. Shame it doesn't have some cheap colour camera; it would have been nice to see the pics of its surroundings.

originally posted by: EchoesInTime
I hope our experts can share more about this mission such as where it's landing and how soon might we get pictures if it's successful .

It's landing near Opportunity, as you can see here.

It looks like there's some confusion about this mission, resulting from it being a mission in two parts. The lander is the first part of the mission, and it's mostly a technological mission, to see if all things work as expected, and that's why it will last only as long as the batteries last. But it will give some scientific information, as it has sensors for wind speed and direction, humidity, pressure, temperature close to the surface, transparency of the atmosphere, and atmospheric electrification, something that I think was never measured before.

The lander also carries the instruments for AMELIA (Atmospheric Mars Entry and Landing Investigation and Analysis), that will get atmospheric data during the descent, so we can get an idea of how the Mars' atmosphere changes from high altitude down to the surface.

All the above information was found here.

The second part of this mission will start only at the end of 2017, after the orbiting Trace Gas Orbiter stabilises its orbit and starts gathering information about the Martian atmosphere and ground.

PS: thanks for posting this, I forgot about this mission.

originally posted by: wildespace
Shame it doesn't have some cheap colour camera; it would have been nice to see the pics of its surroundings.

They have a descent camera that will take only 15 photos during the descent.

Here is a Live feed of the probe. Hope all goes well.

livestream.com... A press conference is scheduled for 20 October at 08:00 GMT / 10:00 CEST, when a mission status update is expected, along with the first images from the Schiaparelli descent camera

A communication loss with a spacecraft wherever it might be in 2016 is not admissible, and not credible.
Check Voyager 1 for a comparison.

It didn't take long for the conspiracy theories to appear.....

a reply to: EchoesInTime

Prior to atmospheric entry at 14:42 GMT, contact via the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the world’s largest interferometric array, located near Pune, India, was established just after it began transmitting a beacon signal 75 minutes before reaching the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere. However, the signal was lost some time prior to landing. A series of windows have been programmed to listen for signals coming from the lander via ESA’S Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Atmosphere & Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) probes. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) also has listening slots. If Schiaparelli reached the surface safely, its batteries should be able to support operations for three to ten days, offering multiple opportunities to re-establish a communication link.

www.esa.int...

There will be a media briefing today at 10:00 CEST. It will be live streamed on esa.int.

Hopefully there will be good news about the mission. Everything seemed to be going well until they did not receive the expected signal.

Saw the briefing. Looks like the parachute jettisoned when it should have, but the landing rockets only fired for a few seconds instead of ~30-40.

Splat.

Oh well, they got very good telemetry out of it, so they will know exactly what went wrong.

I'd call it a good try. This is very hard, and they're trying to do this with European tech (rather than borrowing from the US or Russia), which is great because it helps their industry and inspires their kids & wannabe-engineers in the same way that Apollo did for us.

The ESA is looking at this as a very difficult engineering experiment, and they learned a lot from it. In engineering, art, science or love, we often learn more from our mistakes than from doing everything right.

Good try, ESA. Better luck next time!

It's shame that if failed. They are saying likely blew up as well.

I don't know how the humanity is going to make it to Mars though, if we still can't 'stick the landing' .There is no way this mission to mars will happen in the time frame they announced.

I really hope to see the Asgardia mission be successful in my lifetime. They are taking applications if anyone is interested in living in space.

yep, I was watching a landing on tv....in the 80's.....a right before the loss.....there was a huge shadow on it..mariner

Possibly related? The upper stage of the Russian rocket that sent Exomars to Mars exploded shortly after spacecraft separation, leaving a large debris field near the newly launched spacecraft as it departed earth.

I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I do wonder if these two incidents had any connection.

Ouch!

ExoMars Lander Slammed Into Mars At Over 186 MPH - Crash Site Seen
www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: EchoesInTime
I don't know how the humanity is going to make it to Mars though, if we still can't 'stick the landing' .There is no way this mission to mars will happen in the time frame they announced.

I think that one problem with unmanned missions, specially simpler ones like this, is that they don't have a way to react to things when they go wrong.
In this case, for example, it looks like the parachute was dropped too soon and the rockets fired for a shorter time than they should. A different mission with a backup parachute and manual controls could have got safely to the ground.

Yes, I'm an optimist.

a reply to: wildespace

Well, it looks like they at least "landed" on the right place.

a reply to: Saint Exupery

(rather than borrowing from the US or Russia)

That wouldnt do any good either. If we could only borrow the US 1960's tech...now that would be helpful. Though I hear aluminum foil is still around and kicking.