European Space Agency confirms Mars lander lost during descent

The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed the Schiaparelli spacecraft, which was expected to land on Mars on Wednesday, has been lost.

During a press conference on Thursday, scientists said that Schiaparelli stopped transmitting around 50 seconds before the expected landing.

The agency suspects something went wrong when the parachute was jettisoned: “The ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete,” it said in a statement.

ESA’s Director General, Jan Wörner, said Schiaparelli’s primary role was to test whether they could successfully land a probe on Mars.

“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,” Wörner said.

David Parker, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration said it’s what they wanted from a test.

“We have data coming back that allows us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur,” he said.

The probe was equipped with nine thrusters that were due to be activated for the last 30 seconds to help cushion the landing. But while they were confirmed to have been briefly activated, the agency believes they switched off sooner than expected.

The anxious wait

Scientists with ESA were anxiously waiting for news from Schiaparelli yesterday.

After a high-speed, fiery descent through the Martian atmosphere, scientists at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, did not get a signal back from the 1,272 pound (577 kilogram) probe.

The mission, a joint venture between ESA’s ExoMars program and the Russian state corporation Roscosmos, was primarily designed to test ESA’s ability to land on Mars. The agency has a bigger mission, the ExoMars rover project, slated for 2020.

Sister ship is safe

Schiaparelli’s companion craft, an orbiter with a much longer mission, successfully made it to orbit on Wednesday. The Trace Gas Orbiter will investigate the source of methane on Mars, which could be a sign of life or geological processes.

The orbiter adds to a fleet of spacecraft that are looking for signs of life on our neighboring planet.

The presence of methane is a signature of life on Earth, so the orbiting spacecraft will be trying to detect it and determine where it is coming from.

Adam Stevens, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the UK Centre for Astrobiology said methane may be produced by other processes but the mission will help “rule out some possibilities … to tease out what is going on.”

The Trace Gas Oribiter is expected to operate until 2020.

When will humans get to Mars?

This image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's panoramic camera from May 13 through June 10, 2018. The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.

Are those Martian blueberries? These tiny spherules pepper the sandy surface in this 3-centimeter (1.2-inch) square view of the Martian surface. Opportunity took this image while the target was shadowed by the rover's instrument arm.

From its perch high on a ridge, Opportunity recorded this image of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. Just as on Earth, a dust devil is created by a rising, rotating column of hot air. When the column whirls fast enough, it picks up tiny grains of dust from the ground, making the vortex visible.

While traversing on and around the ancient volcanic feature called Home Plate, Spirit took many images of finely layered and more frothy looking volcanic rocks.

Opportunity photographed its tracks in the soft sand between the Endurance and Victoria craters on the Meridiani Plains.

More blueberries! Opportunity took this photo in 2004 of a rock called "Last Chance." The spherules embedded in the rock reminded the researchers of berries in muffins. The textures in the rock actually helped researchers determine that Mars had wet environmental conditions in the past.

Oppy's panoramic camera gathered this mosaic in 2014 of Wdowiak Ridge, as well as the rover's tracks to the right. This is about 70 degrees from north/northwest to east/northeast, showing the 500-feet ridge that rises 40 feet tall.

The rover took a selfie to show how much dust it had accumulated in 2011 before the windy season helped knock some of it off.

Sometimes, when Opportunity's solar power was limited, it would stop between treks to different features on Mars. This 2010 photo of its tracks on the surface show it "hopping from lily pad to lily pad."

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this photo of Victoria Crater, about a half-mile in diameter. It was Opportunity's home for 14 of the first 46 months it spent on Mars.

Opportunity's panoramic camera took this photo of outcrop rocks that it encountered on its journey in 2005. Cracks and other features are obvious. The two holes visible were drilled by the rover to expose the underlying material.

A shadow selfie. On July 26, 2004, the rover took this photo commemorating its 90 days on Mars -- the amount of time the mission was supposed to last. Instead, it continued for 15 years.

Opportunity made an impact. A panoramic image shows the heat shield impact site when it landed in 2004.

This iron meteorite was the first meteorite of any type ever found on another planet. The basketball-sized meteorite is rich in iron and nickel, and Opportunity found it in 2005.

Endurance Crater and its tendrils of sand presented a beautiful photo chance for the rover in 2004. Mars is full of dunes, and this is just one example Opportunity encountered.

These pointy features were called "Razorback." They're only a few centimeters tall, but the chunks of rock were found sticking up at the edge of flat rocks in Endurance Crater. They may have formed when fluids moved through rock fractures.

In 2010, Opportunity took this panorama of the eastward horizon view of Endeavour Crater's rim.

The Mars Spirit rover was Opportunity's twin, and it's mission ended in 2011. Both rovers featured a piece of metal with the American flag on the side. They are made of aluminum recovered from the site of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

These two views from NASA's Curiosity rover -- from June 7, left, and June 10 2018 -- show how dust increased over three days from a major Martian dust storm that became planet-encircling on June 20, 2018. Opportunity was stranded in the middle of the storm and wasn't heard from afterward.

NASA's Opportunity rover appears as a blip in the center of this square. This image taken by HiRISE, a high-resolution camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showed the dust storm over Perseverance Valley had substantially cleared.

Exploring Mars: 15 years of Opportunity on Mars

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While ESA continues its attempt to land on Mars, the United States is moving ahead with plans to send humans to the planet.

Writing for CNN, US President Barack Obama spoke of America’s aim to put humans on Mars in the 2030s with the eventual aim of staying for an “extended time.”

Two NASA rovers continue to operate on the Martian surface – Curiosity, which arrived in 2012, and Opportunity, which has been returning images for more than 12 years. Spirit’s mission ended in 2011.

Several orbiters are learning more about Mars, and private companies have ambitious plans to launch missions there, including Space X and Mars One.

CNN’s David Gilbert contributed to this report.