Test probe set to land on Mars in mission to explore Red Planet
Moscow - Seven months after its launch, a multibillion-dollar project to look for traces of life on Mars faces a crucial moment Wednesday with a fraught dual manoeuvre to land a test module on Earth's neighbour and place a spacecraft in its orbit.
The Schiaparelli probe's landing as part of the Exo Mars project by the European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos could have implications for future plans to research - and even colonize - the Red Planet.
The automated landing manoeuvre starts 121 kilometres above the surface with rapid braking from a speed of 21,000 kilometres an hour. Mission Control at Darmstadt in Germany will be unable to intervene given the time delay of some 10 minutes.
If all goes well, the batteries will provide power for a few days for data to be sent back to Earth from the Meridiani Planum in the Martian highlands.
Schiaparelli has a sort of webcam on its under side that will shoot 15 black-and-white photographs of the Martian surface at intervals of 1.5 seconds, starting at three kilometres up.
The probe left Earth from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanin March together with the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), from which it separated on Sunday.
That spacecraft is set to enter Mars' orbit on Wednesday with an approximately 134-minute-long main engine burn set to start at 1305 GMT, the precision of which is crucial.
Once in orbit, the TGO is set to begin its analysis of the Martian atmosphere at the end of next year.
