NASA spacecraft finds wrecked lander robot on Mars.

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars has located the Schiaparelli lander after it deployed its parachute too early and crashed onto the planet's surface.

This image shows the crash site of the Schiaparelli robot on the surface of Mars. Photo: NASA.

Images sent back to Earth yesterday by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft helped the control team confirm that the Schiaparelli rover crashed into Mars and may have exploded after the impact, according to Live Science.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Schiaparelli lander stopped transmitting signals to Earth about a minute before its scheduled landing time on the morning of October 19th. ESA experts believe that Schiaparelli's parachute opened too early, causing the deceleration rocket to activate prematurely, but not long enough before the device landed.

The photos show a bright object, possibly the robot's 12-meter-diameter parachute, along with a dark area 40 meters long and 15 meters wide, most likely where the robot crashed to the ground.

"According to our estimates, Schiaparelli fell from a height of 2-4 km, so the impact occurred at a speed exceeding 300 km/h. The relatively large size of the dark area is due to the surface subjected to the strong impact. It is also possible that the robot exploded because its propellant fuel tank was still full. These preliminary estimates will be refined after our more in-depth analysis," the ESA leader stated.

The Schiaparelli robot can explode upon impact. Photo: PA.

ExoMars experts believe the fuel tank was still full because data transmitted from Schiaparelli indicated the robot did not operate its thrusters to reduce speed for a sufficient amount of time. The MRO captured images using a CTX camera with relatively low resolution. According to ESA, the MRO will record clearer images of the impact area with a High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera next week.

The dark area is located 5.4 km west of Schiaparelli's planned landing site, within the Meridiani Planum plateau south of the Martian equator.

Along with the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) orbiter, Schiaparelli is part of the initial phase of the ExoMars program, a collaboration between ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, aimed at sending probes to Mars in search of signs of life by 2020.

According to VNE