The Mars lander was lost during the last minutes of its descent to the planet's surface, the European Space Agency confirmed on Thursday while it searched for answers to what exactly happened.
The space agency lost contact with the Schiaparelli lander about a minute before it was expected to touch down on Mars, reported The Guardian. The lander released its parachute a kilometer from the surface but then the signal died shortly afterwards, leaving scientists wondering if it crash-landed and even where it was.
The Schiaparelli lander arrived near Mars with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter after taking off from Earth March 14, according to the ESA website. Scientists had hoped to demonstrate the agency's capability to perform a controlled landing on the surface of Mars.
"When we put it in the Martian environment, the spacecraft didn't behave exactly as expected," said Andrea Accomazzo, the space agency's spacecraft operations manager, per The Guardian. "It might take quite some time before we are able to locate it."
The BBC News said the ESA received a large volume of engineering data from Schiaparelli, via the Trace Gas Orbiter, confirming that everything was fine with the lander before entering Mars' atmosphere.
The agency said the lander's heatshield and parachute worked properly, but that had experienced "unusual behavior" afterward.
"We cannot resolve yet under which, let's say, logic that the machine has decided to eject the parachute," Accomazzo told the BBC News. "But this is definitely far too early compared to our expectations."
Jan Woerner, the European Space Agency's director general, told a news conference Thursday that the operation had been largely successful and the possible lander mishap would not delay the second phase of ExoMars mission, to launch a six-wheeled rover to Mars in 2020.
"Yes, I am happy," Woerner told the news conference, per The Guardian. "The engineers are doing great work, but still you just need a bit of luck to succeed."
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