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OUT OF THIS WORLD | What's Up In Space - a weekly look at the biggest news coming down to Earth from space

Has Mars claimed another lander? Hope wanes for Schiaparelli


Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Thursday, October 20, 2016, 6:19 PM - ExoMars 2016's orbiter is now safely circling Mars, but things are not looking good for the lander part of the mission. Also, Earth now has two inhabited outposts in space and MAVEN gives us a glimpse at Invisible Mars. It's What's Up In Space!

Hope waning for ExoMars 2016's weather station

A new mission arrived at Mars on Wednesday - the ESA/Roscosmos' ExoMars 2016, which is composed of the Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft and the Schiaparelli lander. While TGO's job will be to investigate Mars' atmosphere from space, Schiaparelli will put a weather station on the ground, to examine conditions there in support of the 2020 lander/rover phase of the mission.

As of Thursday, the ExoMars team confirmation that the TGO spacecraft had not only achieved orbital insertion, as planned, but was in excellent health.


Artists rendition of ExoMars TGO on approach to Mars orbit. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

As for the Schiaparelli lander, it is looking as though it did not survive its trip to the surface.

The lander did not contact either the ESA Mars Express orbiter or NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, during their scheduled flyovers of Schiaparelli's landing zone. Also, the team back home had received some conflicting data - from telescope observations from here on Earth and from the signals Mars Express was receiving as the lander entered the atmosphere - which needed to be resolved before they could figure out what happened.

According to the ESA:

The detailed telemetry recorded by the Trace Gas Orbiter was needed to better understand the situation. At the same time as Schiaparelli’s descent, the orbiter was performing a crucial ‘Mars Orbit Insertion’ manoeuvre – which it completed successfully. These important data were recorded from Schiaparelli and beamed back to Earth in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The data have been partially analysed and confirm that the entry and descent stages occurred as expected, with events diverging from what was expected after the ejection of the back heat shield and parachute. This ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete.
The thrusters were confirmed to have been briefly activated although it seems likely that they switched off sooner than expected, at an altitude that is still to be determined.

All is not lost with this mission, though. Schiaparelli's role in this mission was to test out the landing sequence for the 2020 lander and rover. The lander's weather station was a bonus, to give them more information about the location they had chosen for the 2020 phase of the mission, however it was not crucial for the mission to move forward.

"Schiaparelli’s primary role was to test European landing technologies," ESA Director General Jan Wörner said in a press release on Thursday. "Recording the data during the descent was part of that, and it is important we can learn what happened, in order to prepare for the future."

"In terms of the Schiaparelli test module, we have data coming back that allow us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur," David Parker, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration, explained in the press release. "From the engineering standpoint, it's what we want from a test, and we have extremely valuable data to work with. We will have an inquiry board to dig deeper into the data and we cannot speculate further at this time."

Stand by for further updates, as they come in.

Two inhabited outposts in orbit

With three crew members currently on board the International Space Station, and three more on their way as of early Wednesday morning, these spacelings have been joined by a second inhabited space station in orbit.

On Sunday, October 16, two Chinese astronauts - veteran, three-time taikonaut, Jing Haipeng, and 1st-time taikonaut Chen Dong - lifted off for Earth orbit and on Tuesday, they arrived at China's newest space station, Tiangong-2.

This isn't the first time there has been more than one inhabited space station in orbit at the same time.

NASA's Skylab shared orbit with four different Russian Salyut space stations during its 1973-1979 mission. Russia's Mir was in orbit during another Salyut mission and was there when the International Space Station was first launched, although Mir and the ISS were never inhabited at the same time.

The International Space Station has been continuously inhabited for nearly 16 years, and in that time, it has now shared low-Earth orbit with two different Chinese space stations - Tiangong-1 from September 2011 until now, and newly launched Tiangong-2. Tiangong-1 was only inhabited for a sum total of 25 days (two crews of 3 taikonauts each, one in 2012 and another in 2013). This first mission on board Tiangong-2 will beat that, at a total of 30 days - China's longest space station crew yet - and another crew is apparently scheduled to launch in 2017.

Watch below as CCTV shows the crew entering Tiangong-2 for the first time.

Invisible Mars

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission keeps returning amazing science from the Red Planet.

The latest results reveal the unseen action taking place on the planet.

According to NASA:

Images from MAVEN's Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph were used to make this movie of rapid cloud formation on Mars on July 9-10, 2016. The ultraviolet colors of the planet have been rendered in false color, to show what we would see with ultraviolet-sensitive eyes. The movie uses four MAVEN images to show about 7 hours of Mars rotation during this period, and interleaves simulated views that would be seen between the four images. Mars' day is similar to Earth’s, so the movie shows just over a quarter day. The left part of the planet is in morning and the right side in afternoon. Mars’ prominent volcanoes, topped with white clouds, can be seen moving across the disk. Mars’ tallest volcano, Olympus Mons, appears as a prominent dark region near the top of the images, with a small white cloud at the summit that grows during the day. Olympus Mons appears dark because the volcano rises up above much of the hazy atmosphere which makes the rest of the planet appear lighter. Three more volcanoes appear in a diagonal row, with their cloud cover merging to span up to a thousand miles by the end of the day. These images are particularly interesting because they show how rapidly and extensively the clouds topping the volcanoes form in the afternoon. Similar processes occur at Earth, with the flow of winds over mountains creating clouds. Afternoon cloud formation is a common occurrence in the American West, especially during the summer.

The spacecraft also captured data on "night glow" on Mars.


Credits: NASA/MAVEN/University of Colorado

As NASA explains:

This image of the Mars night side shows ultraviolet emission from nitric oxide (abbreviated NO). The emission is shown in false color with black as low values, green as medium, and white as high. These emissions track the recombination of atomic nitrogen and oxygen produced on the dayside, and reveal the circulation patterns of the atmosphere. The splotches, streaks and other irregularities in the image are indications that atmospheric patterns are extremely variable on Mars' nightside. The inset shows the viewing geometry on the planet. MAVEN's Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph obtained this image of Mars on May 4, 2016 during late winter in Mars Southern Hemisphere.

For more, check out NASA's website.

Sources: ESA | TechCrunch | NASA

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