Meanwhile on Mars: The Fate of ESA’s ExoMars Schiaparelli Lander [Comic]

In case you haven’t heard, The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Schiaparelli Lander was scheduled to land on Mars last week, and shortly after the descent procedure started, all communication with the lander was lost. This comic by Commitstrip sheds some light unto what might have happened.

It was launched together with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on 14 March 2016 and attempted a landing on 19 October 2016. Telemetry signals from Schiaparelli, monitored in real time by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India, were lost about one minute from the surface during the final landing stages. On 21 October 2016, NASA released a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image showing what appears to be the lander’s crash site. The telemetry data accumulated by the TGO and ESA’s Mars Express orbiters are being used to investigate the failure modes of the landing technology employed [Source].

[Source: CommitStrip | Like CommitStrip on Facebook]