Schiaparelli UPDATE: Europe’s ExoMars Lander Has Probably CRASHED On Red Planet

The Schiaparelli EDM lander, a part of the ExoMars mission which is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (RFSA) has almost certainly crashed into the Red Planet, as per reports. This makes it the second failed attempt by Europe's space division to make a landing on the Martian surface.

Schiaparelli detached from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on Sunday October 16 and was supposed to make a touchdown on the surface of Mars on October 19. However, after the module's descent, the ground control lost contact with it. After waiting to hear something from the probe for a nervous few hours, the ESA reportedly concluded that Schiaparelli has probably crashed into Mars.

According to reports, it is being suggested that the Schiaparelli lander was deployed too early from the ExoMars TGO mothership. Consequently, the parachute could not jettison properly. "The ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete," ESA said in a statement.

ESA has reportedly tried down play Schiaparelli's failure to successfully land by stating that it was just test landing. "From the engineering standpoint, it is what we want from a test, and we have extremely valuable data to work with," said David Parker, ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration. "We'll have an enquiry board to dig deeper into the data and we cannot speculate further at this time."

A lot of stakes were riding on the successful touchdown of the lander, especially after the previous failures that Europe and Russia have had. Therefore, the debacle will raise further questions about Europe's capability to successfully reach a robot on the Martian surface, especially in the wake of plans by US and China to send human missions to Mars in the near future.