The ESA Schiaparelli mission launched on March 14, 2016, to provide the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos) with data on the technology required for landing on Mars. It is due to contact with the surface of the planet on October 19, 2016. It is equipped with a non-rechargeable electric battery with enough capacity for two to eight Martian days.
On October 19, 2016, between 1:05 pm and 3:24 pm, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter module was placed in the planned orbit around Mars. EDM Schiaparelli entered the Martian atmosphere 107 minutes later and began his orbit insertion maneuver.
At 20:55 CEST, the ESA team from Darmstadt had not yet confirmed the contact with Schiaparelli. In the press conference that followed on October 20, ESA experts reported that EDM Schiaparelli collected all the data from the mission plan, which were received by the ExoMars TGO probe, but did not exactly meet expectations.
The Place Where ESA’s Schiaparelli Mission Crashed On Mars
On October 21, 2016, the director of the ExoMars mission stated: “Schiaparelli reached the ground at a much higher speed than it should have, several hundred kilometers per hour, and then, unfortunately, the probe was destroyed by
the impact.
The Descent Camera (DECA) was intended to capture about 15 downward-looking views as it approached the surface of Mars. It was to begin acquiring images after the lower heat shield was ejected. This camera had a 60-degree field of view to capture greyscale images, to support technical knowledge of the descent. DECA was a flight spare of the visual monitoring camera of the Herschel Space Observatory and Plank mission that was launched together.
The camera dimensions are 9 cm (3.5 in) squared, with a mass of 0.6 kg (1.3 lb). The DECA descent camera data were stored during descent and not meant to be relayed to Earth until after landing, so these images were lost in the crash. The purpose of this transfer delay was to protect the spacecraft and data from electrostatic discharges. DECA was designed and built in Belgium by Optique et Instruments de Precision (OIP).
