Europeans mystified by crash of their Mars lander and the crater it created
Frankfurt — Images taken by a Nasa Mars orbiter indicate that Europe’s ill-fated Mars lander left a small crater on the Red Planet’s surface, backing up scientists’ theory that the craft hit the ground at high speed. The disc-shaped, 577kg Schiaparelli probe, part of the Russian-European ExoMars programme to search for evidence of life on Mars, was destroyed last week when its thrusters stopped firing too soon during its descent to the surface. It was only the second European attempt to land a craft on Mars, after a failed mission by the British craft Beagle 2 in 2003, and was designed to test technologies for a rover. Scientists believe that the Schiaparelli lander plummeted to the ground from a height of between 2km and 4km, hitting the ground at more than 300km/h instead of touching down softly as intended. New high-resolution pictures taken by the US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a dark spot at the crash site, which the European Space Agency (ESA) said was consistent with a c...
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