A European spacecraft has detached from its mothership to begin an attempt to make a tricky landing on Mars. Schiaparelli is the first European Space Agency (ESA) probe in nearly 15 years to try to make contact with the red planet. It will also test out a landing system to be used for a future rover mission that will look for evidence of past or present living organisms. Schiaparelli was launched on 14 March in the first stage of an ambitious joint European and Russian mission to search for the first clear evidence of life on Mars. A key function of Schiaparelli is to try out the rover’s parachute and retro-rocket landing system.

Source: The Guardian October 16, 2016 16:18 UTC