Since mid-March the ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter, an atmospheric research craft whipping around the Red Planet, has been carting along an ambitious experimental lander meant to test the ESA’s entry, descent and landing strategy for its ExoMars 2020 mission.
Named Schiaparelli, the 600-kg (1,300 lbs) lander is schedule to enter the Martian atmosphere on October 19, 2016. Travelling at an estimated 21,000 k/hr (13,000mph), Schiaparelli will begin its descent by relying on the Red Planet’s atmosphere for its initial breaking regime. Once it has sufficiently slowed, the lander will unleash two parachutes to rapidly decelerate as terra firma nears. In its final act, Schiaparelli will cut its engines around 2 meters (6.5ft) above the Martian surface and land on a crushable pillow covering its falling side.
Though landings like the one planned by the ESA have been achieved in the past, sending a lander to another planet is still tricky and expensive business. That’s why the ESA’s strategy is to test a lander before sending a more expensive module up before the end of the decade.
Fortunately, with the ESA’s latest announcement, it appears that the delicate and intricately timed commands that will govern Schiaparelli’s descent and landing have been uploaded to the craft’s computer successfully.
“Uploading the command sequences is a milestone that was achieved following a great deal of intense cooperation between the mission control team and industry specialists,” said Orbiter flight director Michel Denis.
Only a few days remain before Schiaparelli tests its fate. If the lander does set down safely on Mars, ESA scientists will begin a two-day survey of the Martian atmosphere using the few scientific instruments on board the craft.
While researchers at the ESA believe they’ll have up to two days to probe the alien world, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the craft performed its duties much longer; there’s just something about those Martian machines that likes to defy operational time limits.
For another example of a long-lived spacecraft, find out how the Spitzer Space Telescope was repurposed 13 years after launch.