Despite the rough landing that
has silenced the Schiaparelli lander during the European Space
Agency's (ESA) ExoMars mission, valuable info is being received
from another part of the mission and bodes well for the 2020
phase, Italy's space agency chief Roberto Battiston said
Thursday.
He added that the second phase of the mission, a bilateral
effort with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, will be
discussed at the ESA government ministers' meeting on December
1-2 in Lucerne, Switzerland.
"In terms of the quantity and quality of data that we are
receiving, ExoMars has been a successful mission. Europe has a
satellite in the Mars orbit," Battiston said in referring to the
Trace Gas Orbiter satellite.
"It is entirely in the orbit and operative," he continued,
"and therefore able to monitor and transmit data on the
composition of the atmosphere on Mars."
On the Schiaparelli lander, the signal to which was lost a
minute before the completion of its descent onto Mars, Battiston
said that it was a test and that " it seems that it performed
all the maneuvers scheduled until a few seconds prior to contact
with the ground, such as the opening of the parachute, the
detaching from the thermal shield and the ignition of the brake
rockets. We don't have the data from the last few seconds yet,
on which technicians are working. Overall, we are encouraged to
continue the work for ExoMars 2020, one of the main issues to be
discussed at the ministerial meeting."
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