ExoMars lander 'crashed' onto Mars (2)

(ANSA) - Rome, October 20 - 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.