By Thompson Reuters, October 21, 2016
NASA pictures show a black spot in area where the Schiaparelli craft was meant to land
Images taken by a NASA Mars orbiter indicate that a missing European space probe was destroyed on impact after plummeting to the surface of the Red Planet from a height of two to four kilometres, the European Space Agency said on Friday.
The disc-shaped, 1,272 lb Schiaparelli probe, part of the Russian-European ExoMars programme to search for evidence of life on Mars, descended on Wednesday to test technologies for a rover that scientists hope to send to the surface of the planet in 2020.
