page_title: Schiaparelli EDM
section_title: Crash
hierarchical_section_title: Schiaparelli EDM / Entry, descent, and landing events sequence / Crash
caption_attribution_description: English: This Oct. 25, 2016, image shows the area where the European Space Agency's Schiaparelli test lander reached the surface of Mars, with magnified insets of three sites where components of the spacecraft hit the ground. It is the first view of the site from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken after the Oct. 19, 2016, landing event. The Schiaparelli test lander was one component of ESA's ExoMars 2016 project, which placed the Trace Gas Orbiter into orbit around Mars on the same arrival date. This HiRISE observation adds information to what was learned from observation of the same area on Oct. 20 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Context Camera (CTX). Of these two cameras, CTX covers more area and HiRISE shows more detail. A portion of the HiRISE field of view also provides color information. The impact scene was not within that portion for the Oct. 25 observation, but an observation with different pointing to add color and stereo information is planned. This Oct. 25 observation shows three locations where hardware reached the ground, all within about 0.9 mile (1.5 kilometer) of each other, as expected. The annotated version includes insets with six-fold enlargement of each of those three areas. Brightness is adjusted separately for each inset to best show the details of that part of the scene. North is about 7 degrees counterclockwise from straight up. The scale bars are in meters. At lower left is the parachute, adjacent to the back shell, which was its attachment point on the spacecraft. The parachute is much brighter than the Martian surface in this region. The smaller circular feature just south of the bright parachute is about the same size and shape as the back shell, (diameter of 7.9 feet or 2.4 meters). At upper right are several bright features surrounded by dark radial impact patterns, located about where the heat shield was expected to impact. The bright spots may be part of the heat shield, such as insulation material, or gleaming reflections of the afternoon sunlight. According to the ExoMars project, which received data from the spacecraft during its descent through the atmosphere, the heat shield separated as planned, the parachute deployed as planned but was released (with back shell) prematurely, and the lander hit the ground at a velocity of more than 180 miles per hour (more than 300 kilometers per hour). At mid-upper left are markings left by the lander's impact. The dark, approximately circular feature is about 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) in diameter, about the size of a shallow crater expected from impact into dry soil of an object with the lander's mass -- about 660 pounds (300 kilograms) -- and calculated velocity. The resulting crater is estimated to be about a foot and a half (half a meter) deep. This first HiRISE observation does not show topography indicating the presence of a crater. Stereo information from combining this observation with a future one may provide a way to check. Surrounding the dark spot are dark radial patterns expected from an impact event. The dark curving line to the northeast of the dark spot is unusual for a typical impact event and not yet explained. Surrounding the dark spot are several relatively bright pixels or clusters of pixels. They could be image noise or real features, perhaps fragments of the lander. A later image is expected to confirm whether these spots are image noise or actual surface features. Figure 1 is an unannotated version of the full scene, which covers an area about 0.9 mile (1.5 kilometers) wide. It is a portion of HiRISE observation ESP_048041_1780. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace &amp; Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
context_page_description: Schiaparelli EDM was a failed Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module of the ExoMars programme—a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. It was built in Italy and was intended to test technology for future soft landings on the surface of Mars. It also had a limited but focused science payload that would have measured atmospheric electricity on Mars and local meteorological conditions.
  Launched together with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter on 14 March 2016, Schiaparelli attempted a landing on 19 October 2016. Telemetry signals from Schiaparelli, monitored in real time by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India, were lost about one minute from the surface during the final landing stages. On 21 October 2016, NASA released an image by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing what appears to be the lander's crash site. The telemetry data accumulated and relayed by ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express were used to investigate the failure modes of the landing technology employed.
context_section_description: The Schiaparelli lander attempted an automated landing on 19 October 2016, but the signal was unexpectedly lost a short time before the planned landing time. ESA's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN continued listening for the lander's signal to no avail.
  Schiaparelli transmitted about 600 megabytes of telemetry during its landing attempt, and detailed analysis found that its atmospheric entry occurred normally, with the parachute deploying at 12 km (7.5 mi) and 1,730 km/h (1,070 mph), and its heat shield releasing at 7.8 km (4.8 mi). However, the lander's inertial measurement unit, which measures rotation, became saturated (unable to take higher readings) for about one second. This saturation, coupled with data from the navigation computer, generated an altitude reading that was negative, or below ground level. This caused the premature release of the parachute and back shell. The braking thrusters then fired for about three seconds rather than the expected 30 seconds, followed by the activation of ground systems as if the vehicle had already landed. In reality, it was still at an altitude of 3.7 km (2.3 mi). The lander continued transmitting for 19 seconds after the thrusters cut off; the loss of signal occurred 50 seconds before it was supposed to land. Schiaparelli impacted the Martian surface at 540 km/h (340 mph), near terminal velocity.
  A day after the attempted landing, the Context Camera of NASA's MRO identified new ground markings due to the lander's impact and parachute. The crash site is about 54 km (~33.5 miles) from where the active NASA Mars rover Opportunity was at the time of the landing. On 27 October 2016, ESA released high resolution images of the crash site taken by the MRO HiRISE camera on 25 October 2016. The front heatshield, module impact site, and the rear heat-shield and parachute are identified. It is thought that the crater is about half a metre (yard) deep and it may be possible to further study this crater at a later time. On a related note, an artificially made crater was actually the goal of the THOR mission proposed under the Mars Scout program that produced Phoenix and MAVEN, the goal was sub-surface excavation. That mission was passed over, but another orbiter was able to discover naturally occurring fresh impact craters, and ice was found in them.
  Although the lander crashed, ESA officials declared Schiaparelli a success because it had fulfilled its primary function of testing the landing system for the 2020 Kazachok lander and returning telemetry data during its descent. By 20 October, the bulk of the descent data had been returned to Earth and was being analysed. Unlike the Beagle 2 lander, which was not heard from again after being released from Mars Express in 2003, the Exomars module transmitted during descent so data collected and transmitted on the way down was not lost if the spacecraft was destroyed on impact.
  An investigation that concluded in May 2017 revealed that, at that time, the lander deployed its parachute and then began spinning unexpectedly fast. This superfast rotation briefly saturated Schiaparelli's spin-measuring instrument, which resulted in a large attitude-estimation error by the guidance, navigation and control-system software. This resulted in the computer calculating that it was below ground level, triggering the early release of the parachute and backshell, a brief firing of the thrusters for only 3 seconds instead of 30 seconds, and the activation of the on-ground system as if Schiaparelli had landed.
  Images of module's crash site suggested that a fuel tank may have exploded in the impact. It is estimated that the lander impacted the surface at about 300 km/h (83 m/s; 190 mph). Additional imaging of the site by November further confirmed the identity of the spacecraft's parts. The additional imaging was in colour and it was noted that parachute was slightly shifted.
  By taking more images using a technique called super-resolution reconstruction (SRR) the resolution can be improved, and this was done for the formerly lost 
caption: MRO HiRISE image of Schiaparelli impact area taken on 25 October 2016. Blown up in the images are areas identified as lander impact (center left), front heat shield impact (upper right), and parachute and rear heat shield (lower left)
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "90", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "274", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4762", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4875", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5243", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}