Schiaparelli lands on Mars

European Space Agency’s  Mars lander, Schiaparelli, the robot touched down successfully on the Red plant at 1558 BST (1458GMT), the Trace Gas Orbiter, Schiaparelli’s mothership. This spacecraft will study the atmosphere of Earth’s near neighbour.  It was a high-speed approach with precision landing or else the spacecraft runs the risk of crashing into the ground. Schiaparelli has a heatshield, a parachute and rocket thrusters to try to get itself to the surface intact. The mission got down to the surface intact, but stopped working within minutes of its arrival. Schiaparelli was conceived as a technology demonstrator, to give Europe the confidence to try to land a more ambitious six-wheeled rover on Mars in 2021, with dopple radar to sense  distance to surface, and its guidance, navigation and control algorithms.