Happy landing, we hope. On Wednesday, the Mars-bound Schiaparelli craft will undergo its six minutes of – the time between entering the atmosphere of Mars and its scheduled landing on the surface of the Red Planet.
This is the white-knuckle phase of the mission – because its atmosphere is so thin. The feat is made all the more nerve-shredding as the distance from Earth makes direct control by radio signal impossible.
Instead, the lander, one of the key elements in the European Space Agency ExoMars programme will be controlled by pre-programmed on-board systems. If all goes well, simple tones broadcast at UHF frequencies will be picked up by India’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Pune around 1600 BST, approximately 9 minutes after Schiaparelli arrives on the dusty .
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If so, this will mark ESA’s first data transmission from the surface of Mars.
It will, however, be its second landing. As we know now from images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the pioneering UK-led lander Beagle 2, carried to Mars by ESA’s Mars Express craft, successfully touched down on Christmas Day 2003. But it never communicated with Earth. We believe it failed to fully deploy, stopping it transmitting and signalling the UK’s and ESA’s first landing on Mars. It was due to announce its success with a tune provided by the British band Blur.
Beagle 2’s legacy
It is good to see that the wind sensor on Schiaparelli is derived from Beagle 2 and that the lessons learned from its journey have been applied to this and other missions. That’s a welcome legacy.
The importance of Schiaparelli and its companion orbiter is clear. ExoMars continues ESA’s exploration of the Red Planet and signals to NASA and other potential partners that ESA wants to be part of even more ambitious missions, such as returning samples to Earth and, in the longer term, human exploration of Mars.
For those of us in the UK, Wednesday will be a big day. Both industry and academia have much invested in ExoMars and key roles to play in plans for future missions. As with most space exploration, cooperation is key – with Russian space agency, Roscosmos, ESA and NASA involved in both Schiaparelli and the Trace Gas Orbiter, the larger craft it separated from on Sunday.
Crucially, a follow-up and Wednesday’s entry, descent and landing is chiefly a test of the technology for that, although Schiaparelli will also gather data on surface conditions for a few days.
The upcoming rover is highly ambitious – it will be equipped with a drill able to collect and analyse samples from 1 to 1.5 metres beneath the surface, where organics and perhaps evidence of life may be deep enough to survive brutal radiation and chemical degradation.
With so much riding on this, I for one will be keeping my fingers firmly crossed on Wednesday, having lived through the thrill and terror of a Mars landing. In Beagle 2’s case, we had to wait nearly 11 years to learn it was very nearly totally successful.
Hopefully ESA will only have to wait minutes. Happy landing Schiaparelli.
Mark Sims is interim director of the at the University of Leicester and was mission manager for Beagle 2, leading flight operations during Mars entry, descent and landing
