NASA has finally spotted the area where ExoMars Schiaparelli spacecraft crash landed on Mars last week, showing details that the probe's propellant tanks may have exploded as it maneuvered to land on the Red Planet.
It was NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that took high-resolution images on the impact site where the Europe and Russia's experimental lander crashed.
In a statement, the European Space Agency said the main feature of the images taken by the NASA orbiter was a dark fuzzy patch of roughly 15x40m, the place associated with the impact of Schiaparelli itself.
"The high-resolution images show a central dark spot, 2.4m across, consistent with the crater made by a 300-kg object impacting at a few hundred km/h. The crater is predicted to be about 50 cm deep and more detail may be visible in future images," it added.
ESA believed that the hydrazine propellant tanks of the module exploded, causing the uncontrolled descent of ExoMars Schiaparelli towards the surface of Mars. While the probe was within its targeted landing zone, the explosion caused it to dive at around 180mph.
The photo shows the demise of Schiaparelli at the impact site with the lander's parachute and backshell and its discarded heat shield, all within about mile from each other.
"The new images provide a more detailed look at the major components of the Schiaparelli hardware used in the descent sequence," ESA pointed out.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will collect more images in the next couple of weeks to shed light on why Schiaparelli's thrusters shut down early.
ExoMars Schiaparelli project was a joint undertaking of the ESA and the Russian Space Agency.
On Oct. 19, the probe was supposed to test land on Mars but it crashed into the Red Planet instead.
After the incident, the ExoMars team will try to replicate the mistake using a virtual landing system to simulate the lander's hardware and software to make sure that scientists understand the reasons behind the ill-fated ExoMars Schiaparelli.
