Mission controllers appear to have lost contact with a tiny craft that was Europe's big hope for Mars exploration.
The paddling pool-sized "Schiaparelli" lander appeared to have made its way safely through the harsh atmosphere of Mars and onto its surface. But something appears to have gone wrong while it did so – and mission controllers are now unable to speak with it.
The lander sent communications to its mothership, the Trace Gas Orbiter, on its way down. But the signal was lost before touchdown.
"We are not in a position yet to determine the dynamic condition at which the lander touched the ground," European Space Agency (ESA) head of solar and planetary missions, Andrea Accomazzo, told a webcast press briefing at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany.
The failure of the mission has ghostly echoes of the Beagle 2, Europe's last attempt to science on the Martian surface. That arrived at the red planet on Christmas Day in 2003 – but like Schiaparelli it was hit by problems when it landed, and couldn't communicate with Earth.
The lander had been carrying with it instruments meant for analysing the Martian atmosphere and helping understand whether it might be possible that life lives there. But its main purpose was as a test – some of the same landing technologies that were meant to carry it down safely will be used in a much larger 2020 mission, which will send a large rover to Mars.
Some understanding will still come from Schiaparelli. Before it lost contact with Earth, it managed to send back around 600 megabytes of data, and that information will be used both to understand more about the planet and to inform future robot trips to the red planet.
Schiaparelli had travelled for seven years onboard the joint European-Russian Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to come within a million kilometres from Mars on Sunday, when it set off on its own mission to reach the surface.
The pair comprised phase one of the ExoMars mission through which Europe and Russia seek to join the United States in probing the alien Martian surface.
The TGO was successfully placed in Mars orbit on Wednesday, to cheers and applause from ground controllers some 170 million kilometres away.
Its task, starting in 2018, will be to sniff atmospheric gases potentially excreted by living organisms - however small or primitive.
Schiaparelli's landing, in turn, was designed to inform technology for the bigger and more expensive rover scheduled for launch in 2020 - the second phase and high point of ExoMars.
The six-wheel rover will be equipped with a drill to look for clues of life, past or present, up to a depth of two metres.
Additional reporting by agencies
