11:45am UK (6:45am ET), October 20: According to the ESA, it appears that the Schiaparelli lander jettisoned its parachute earlier than expected, and that the retrorockets that were meant to fire for about 30 seconds to slow the craft's descent only fired for three or four seconds. After the thrusters cut off, Schiaparelli continued to beam back telemetry data for 19 seconds. The likely scenario is that the probe crash landed at high speed, but investigations are ongoing.

13:20pm ET Update: As of the latest update from the ESA, there's no indication of any post-landing communication. Operators are planning on analyzing the signals they have to determine whether the lander was on the expected trajectory during descent, and expect to have more news tomorrow morning. The outlook is not terribly promising.

12:50pm ET Update: Some good news from Mars, as the in-space component of the ExoMars mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter, successfully reached orbit after a two-hour burn of its engine. This spacecraft will look for methane and other trace gases in the Martian atmosphere.

As for the Schiaparelli lander, ExoMars project manager Don McCoy provided a brief update after engineers reviewed data collected by Mars Express. He said it was still too early to draw any conclusions, and that engineers would await further information from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter later this afternoon before making a final determination. "Until we have that data we are hesitant to make any conclusions," McCoy said.

Original story: On Wednesday, the European Space Agency sought to become the second entity to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars with its Schiaparelli lander. And everything seemed to be going swimmingly right up until the point that Schiaparelli was to touch down.

The European scientists had been tracking the descent of Schiaparelli through an array of radio telescopes near Pune, India and were able to record the moment when the vehicle exited a plasma blackout. The scientists also received a signal that indicated parachute deployment. But during the critical final moments, when nine hydrazine-powered thrusters were supposed to fire to arrest Schiaparelli's descent, the signal disappeared.

At that point, the European Space Agency's webcast went silent for several minutes before one of the flight directors could be heard to say, "We expected the signal to continue, but clearly it did not. We don't want to jump to conclusions."

It was not clear whether the problem came with the lander or is due to a temporary issue with the communications link. The connection through the Indian communications array was characterized as "experimental," the European scientists said.

We can expect a clearer assessment of the situation when the Mars Express spacecraft in orbit relays a recording of Schiaparelli's descent by or before 12:30pm ET. The spacecraft observed the landing attempt, but it must first swing away from Mars to point its main antenna at Earth before relaying data back.