Humans are always sending out expenses pieces of craft to go and explore the universe beyond the reaches of just our planet. But has it been known that this does not always go well?

The European Space Agency, or ESA, is a Europe-based space company which involves itself in various projects. Some of these projects involve them sending out probes in outer space.

Seven months ago they created two probes, Schiaparelli and his "sister". These two probes were to go and get to Mars, the planet right next to us. Even though it is relatively close to us, the probes were expected to reach around these very days considering that mars is around 500 million kilometers away.

However as luck would have it, things went wrong. Nature reported that Schiaparelli seems to have lost contact with the ESA. The sister probe has landed successfuly but the main probe is nowhere to be found and that is highly stressful considering that everything was going by perfectly and so it is unknown what exactly went wrong.

It reached Mars, and basically it was instructed to hover for a bit and then slowly decend down into the surface of Mars. It used a total of nine thrusters to slow its decent and the whole world was in support to it. Even India was receiving signals from it up until the very last minute when it was to make contact with the ground.

That is when communication with the probe was lost. However, according to The Guardian, not all hope is lost considering how Schiaparelli was just a probe and the mothership did land.

The mothership was the bigggest of the pack of ships that went to Mars. It is 18 metres across and weighs a lot! The ship is designed mainly to detect various gas levels in Mars. Mostly speaking it is meant to detect the level of methane.

This is due to the fact that methane levels are highly in correlation with life. So if there is methane present on the planet, it could bring up the idea for alien life in Mars.

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Tags
Mars, Lost