Scientists at the European Space Agency downplayed the likely loss of its Mars lander, saying Thursday that they gathered the data they needed for future missions. BERLIN—Scientists at the European Space Agency downplayed the likely loss of its Mars lander, saying Thursday that a wealth of data sent back by the experimental probe would help them prepare for a future mission to the red planet. The Schiaparelli lander was designed mainly to test technology for a European robotic mission to Mars in 2020 and avoid the fate of Europe’s Beagle 2 probe, which failed to deploy after landing in 2003. Experts said the probe may have descended too fast or too slowly and hoped that about 600 megabytes of data sent back to Earth would provide answers. The data are equivalent to about 400,000 pages of information for scientists to sift through.

Source: thestar October 20, 2016 12:28 UTC