A European space probe has descended to Mars on Wednesday in what scientists hoped will mark a major milestone in exploration of the red planet. But the Schiaparelli lander's signal went dark moments before touchdown, sparking fears it was now lost in space. The European Space Agency said that while this was "not a good sign for the lander," it was too soon to give up on the craft. Older European and U.S. spacecraft already in orbit relayed data of the lander's six-minute descent. Then the transmission stopped, leaving questions over what state the disk-shaped Mars lander was in. The ESA was, however successfully put Schiaparelli's mother ship, which will analyze the Martian atmosphere, into orbit. Schiaparelli fell through Mars' atmosphere using a heat shield, parachute and rocket boosters to slow it down from 13,000 miles per hour, but several hours after the lander was supposed to have touched down, there was still no firm word on its fate. "The signal [from Schiaparelli] went through the majority of the descent phase but it stopped at a certain point that we reckon was before the landing," Paolo Ferri, ESA's head of operations, said at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. "To conclude more on this, because there could be many reasons for that, we need more information," he said. "It's clear that these are not good signs." Schiaparelli, which is testing technologies for a rover due to follow in 2020, represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on the red planet. A Schiaparelli crash could impact plans for the 2020 rover, though that mission is now using a different type of landing system, ESA scientist Olivier Witasse said during a webcast press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California. "The design of the system has changed over the last few years. ... We will not reuse all the technology from Schiaparelli, so it will impact, but not dramatically, if there is a failure with Schiaparelli," Witasse said. ESA said more information about the Schiaparelli should be available on Thursday, when scientists have had a chance to analyze data from the orbiting craft. Landing on Mars, some 35 million miles away from its nearest planetary neighbor Earth, is a notoriously difficult task and several past missions have failed, including the European Space Agency's previous attempt in 2003 with the rover Beagle 2. It made it to Mars but its solar panels didn't unfold properly, preventing it from communicating. While Schiaparelli has some scientific instruments on board, its main purpose was to rehearse the landing and test technology for a European rover mission to Mars in 2020. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet's surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples. NASA has successfully placed several robotic vehicles on the planet, including the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. The ExoMars program, which comprises the current and 2020 mission, is ESA's first interplanetary mission jointly undertaken with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Meanwhile, the mother ship that carried Schiaparelli from Earth successfully initiated a process of engine burn to reduce enough speed to begin orbiting Mars. The primary goal of ExoMars, the European-Russian program that launched Schiaparelli, is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. The spacecraft, on which the lander traveled, Trace Gas Orbiter, carries an atmospheric probe to study trace gases such as methane around the planet. Scientists believe that methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life, could stem from micro-organisms that either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the planet's surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive. Jan Woerner, the head of ESA, insisted that the mission should still be considered a success because the mother ship had been placed in orbit around Mars as planned. The data gleaned from the lander's descent will be crucial for helping scientists avoid a repeat of the Beagle 2 mission 13 years ago, said ESA's spacecraft operations manager, Andrea Accomazzo. "If we hadn't obtained that data it would have been a total waste," he said. "It's fundamental that we understand what went wrong." All hope is not lost for Schiaparelli, though, said Accomazzo. "We cannot exclude that [it] is safe on the surface and might be in a position to transmit, but I would judge it unlikely."
