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Crash Landing Feared As Europe’s Mars Lander Remains Silent

Crash Landing Feared As Europe’s Mars Lander Remains Silent
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Thrusters intended to slow a European lander as it neared Mars fired for less time than expected Wednesday before contact with the vehicle was lost, leaving scientists uncertain whether it touched down safely or broke apart.

Crash Landing Feared As Europe’s Mars Lander Remains Silent

The Schiaparelli probe, part of a broader mission to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet, was to test technologies during the descent and on the surface for a rover scientists hope to send to Mars in 2020.

Its descent marked only the second European attempt to land a craft on Mars, but it has shown no signs of life since it stopped transmitting around 50 seconds before Wednesday's planned touchdown.

"We've had two overflights [by Mars orbiters] and there was no signal," the European Space Agency's Spacecraft Operations Manager Andrea Accomazzo said Thursday.

The disc-shaped 577-kg Schiaparelli is part of the Russian-European ExoMars program that is seeking signs of life.

The primary part of the mission this year, bringing the Schiaparelli lander's mothership into orbit around Mars, was meanwhile a success.

That craft, called Trace Gas Orbiter, will use an atmospheric probe to sniff out methane and other gases around Mars linked to organic life. It will also act as a data-relay station for the rover, which is due to follow in 2020.

Landing on Mars, Earth's neighbor and at its closest some 56 million km away, is a notoriously difficult task that has thwarted most Russian efforts and given NASA trouble as well.

Schiaparelli is supposed to test new technologies for a rover that will be the first with the ability to both move across the surface of Mars and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.

Scientists said they had received data from the lander covering its entry into the Martian atmosphere and the deployment of its heat shield and parachute, which were designed to slow it from a speed of 21,000 km per hour.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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