The lander may have been lost when it released its parachute ESA

There it is. New pockmarks on the surface of Mars appear to be related to the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander, which was lost shortly before it was supposed to touch down on the planet’s surface on 19 October.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of the expected landing site, in Meridiani Planum, on 20 October as part of a planned observing campaign. The images show two new marks on the surface, compared to the same area as seen in May this year.

Schiaparelli’s landing site before, in May 2016 NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Advertisement

One of the marks is bright, and is believed to be associated with the 12-metre diameter parachute that Schiaparelli used to slow its six-minute descent through the Martian atmosphere.

The other mark is a larger, darker patch about 15 metres by 40 metres in size, about 1 kilometre north of the parachute. This is probably the impact site of the Schiaparelli lander itself, the team wrote in a statement.

The Schiaparelli landing site, after: 20 October, 2016 NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The original plan for the joint European Space Agency and Roscosmos mission was for the lander to detach from the parachute about a kilometre above the surface, and fire thrusters to bring it down to two metres. Then it would fall the remaining distance to plunk down on Mars safely, if not elegantly.

The new images suggest that while the lander successfully separated from the parachute, its thrusters switched off prematurely, and it dropped from a height between 2 and 4 kilometres at a speed greater than 300 kilometres per hour. It’s possible that the lander exploded on impact, since its thruster’s fuel tanks were probably not empty.

The good news is that the possible new crater is well within the area where Shiaparelli was aiming to land.

The team is planning to take more images with MRO’s sharp-eyed HiRISE camera, which will show the area in greater detail and may also find the jettisoned heat shield. The other half of the ExoMars mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter, has recorded a lot of data on the landing as well, and the team is analysing it to find out more about what happened.

Luckily, that spacecraft is still doing well, and should start taking science data in November.