The Schiaparelli lander in the
European Space Agency's (ESA) ExoMars mission crashed onto the
surface of the red planet, the head of ESA mission flight
operations, Paolo Ferri, told ANSA Thursday. The lander's
retro-rockets only fired for three seconds, after which the
onboard computer shut them down, he said. "The data we have,"
Ferri said, "say the landing sequence worked up to the
detachment of the parachute's back shield. At that point the
ignition of the retro-rockets only worked for three seconds,
then the online computer decided to turn them off". This meant
Schiaparelli was without retrorockets and "we suppose the lander
simply crashed". At mission control (ESOC) in Darmstadt,
technicians are continuing to analyse data from the Trace Gas
Orbiter to establish whether the malfunctioning was by the
computer or by the altimeter.
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