Italian Space Agency President Roberto Battiston holds a pamphlet reading in Italian 'Colonize Mars, Friday, Oct. 19, 2016, in front of a rendering showing the Schiaparelli Space Module and the planet... (Associated Press) 
 
 BERLIN (AP) — Europe's experimental Mars probe hit the right spot — but at the wrong speed — likely ending up in a fiery ball of rocket fuel when it struck the surface at high speed, scientists said Friday. 
 
 Pictures taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a black spot in the area where the Schiaparelli lander was meant to touch down Wednesday, the European Space Agency said. The images end two days of speculation following the probe's unexpected radio silence 50 seconds before the planned landing. 
 
 Schiaparelli was meant to test technology for a more ambitious European Mars landing in 2020, and scientists say the data it sent back before going silent will prove highly useful for that mission. ESA also stressed that Schiaparelli's mother ship was successfully placed into orbit Wednesday and will begin analyzing the Martian atmosphere in search for evidence of life. 
 
 Still, the crash-landing is a painful reminder of how hard it is to put a spacecraft on the surface of the red planet. Europe's Beagle 2 probe reached the surface in 2003 but failed to deploy properly. Only NASA has repeatedly succeeded in landing several robotic vehicles on Mars, including the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. 
 
 ESA said that, according to what its scientists have been able to piece together so far, Schiaparelli suffered problems during the last 50 seconds of its descent through the harsh Martian atmosphere. 
 
 Instead of achieving a soft landing it probably plummeted the last 2-4 kilometers (1.4-2.4 miles) onto the surface, therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour. 
 
 The pictures taken by NASA suggest that the probe's thrusters — which were meant to slow its final descent — failed, causing it to hit the surface with almost fully loaded tanks of rocket fuel and explode on impact. 
 
 While Schiaparelli was able to beam back some 600 megabytes of data before the crash, scientists won't get any of the close-up photos the probe took during its descent. Those were meant to be transmitted after the landing. 
 
 ___ 
 
 ExoMars mission: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars ||||| The launch of ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli lander heralds a new phase of Mars exploration. 
 
 A Russian Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome earlier today with humanity's sole mission to Mars for 2016: the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. 
 
 The launch occurred at 9:31 Universal Time (5:31 a.m. EDT) and went off without a hitch. Next, the Proton rocket and its Briz (Breeze) M upper stage performed a series of looping elliptical passes and correction burns while still in Earth orbit before setting the spacecraft on a path to the Red Planet. (Remember, a malfunction at this stage is what doomed the Phobos-Grunt mission in 2011.) 
 
 Final separation of the ExoMars spacecraft occurred as planned 41 minutes 19 seconds after liftoff, and engineers expect to get first contact signalling a healthy spacecraft en route to Mars at 21:28 UT later today. 
 
 “It's a milestone that caps off several years of preparation for any complex mission — designing, building and testing ground systems, preparing the flight operations procedures and then finally an intensive period of planning,” says Paolo Ferri, ESA's head of missions operations, in a recent press release. 
 
 Tempting the "Galactic Ghoul" 
 
 The optimal time for Mars-bound launches comes around about once every two years. The launch window for ExoMars ran from March 14th to 25th, a couple months before Mars reaches opposition on May 22nd. NASA's InSight lander was also set to make the journey to Mars during a similar window, but a sensor leak forced planners to delay the launch. NASA is now targeting a new launch date in May 2018. 
 
 ExoMars carries its own lander, dubbed Schiaparelli, slated for release from the orbiter after seven months of cruising to the Red Planet. Release is slated to occur on October 16th — four days before orbital insertion — and Schiaparelli will land three days later at Meridiani Planum, the same region being explored by NASA's long-lived Opportunity rover. 
 
 Schiaparelli is named after the famous 19th-century astronomer and Mars observer Giovanni Schiaparelli. Schiaparelli was actually born on this day in 1835. 
 
 The battery-powered Schiaparelli lander is only expected to last four Martian days (called sols) on the surface. A successful landing would represent a first for any space agency other than NASA's and the Soviet Union's Mars 3 (which stopped working seconds after its safe arrival); all other Russian attempts to land on Mars failed, as did the British Beagle 2 lander in 2003. In 2015, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the ill-fated Beagle 2. Landing and operating on Mars is hard, and many in the space community joke that the "Great Galactic Ghoul" has it out for Mars-bound spacecraft. 
 
 (Learn more about the fates of spacecraft bound for the Martian surface in our FREE ebook: Mars Landings: Then & Now.) 
 
 The Plans for ExoMars 
 
 After arriving in Martian orbit and delivering the Schiaparelli lander to the planet's surface, the ExoMars orbiter will execute a series of looping elliptical orbits. Science operations are scheduled to begin at the end of 2017. ESA also plans to use the ExoMars orbiter as a communications relay for its 2018 ExoMars rover, and the orbiter is designed to operate until 2022. 
 
 The primary objective of this mission, a collaboration between ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, is to search out evidence for trace gases in the Martian atmosphere. One elusive mystery on Mars is the source of trace amounts of methane spotted there from Earth. The gas could be the result of fresh volcanic eruptions or current biological processes. ExoMars will also test key technologies required to land a rover on Mars in 2018. 
 
 The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter carries a Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS), a Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND), the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) infrared and ultraviolet spectrometer, and the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS). CaSSIS will scout out potential landing sites for the 2018 ExoMars rover, while NOMAD and ACS will observe sunlight filtered through the Martian atmosphere when they pass through twilight twice per orbit. 
 
 Meanwhile, down on Mars, the Schiaparelli lander will employ the DREAMS (Dust Characterization, Risk Assessment, and Environment Analyzer on the Martian Surface) meteorological package to monitor conditions on the surface. Sensors on DREAMS were designed by the Finnish company Vaisala, which has a long history of designing weather detectors for use on both Earth and space. The Curiosity rover also uses similar Vaisala weather sensors. 
 
 The arrival of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will add to the growing orbital roll call around the Red Planet, including Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, MRO, Maven, and India's Mars Orbiter Mission. H. G. Wells' Martians may never have invaded Earth, but humanity's robotic explorers are now swiftly conquering the Red Planet. ||||| Image copyright ESA Image caption Artwork: Landing on Mars is not easy and requires rapid deceleration 
 
 Europe's Schiaparelli lander did not behave as expected as it headed down to the surface of Mars on Wednesday. 
 
 Telemetry recovered from the probe during its descent indicates that its parachute was jettisoned too early. 
 
 The rockets it was supposed to use to bring itself to a standstill just above the ground also appeared to fire for too short a time. 
 
 The European Space Agency has not yet conceded that the lander crashed but the mood is not positive. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Schiaparelli's landing sequence - stage by stage 
 
 Landing on Mars is always a daunting prospect. 
 
 It is necessarily a high-speed approach that has to be got just right or the spacecraft runs the risk of smashing into the ground. 
 
 Schiaparelli had a heatshield, a parachute and rocket thrusters in order to slow its approach to the surface. 
 
 If the robot is later confirmed as lost, it will clearly be a major blow to Esa which suffered the disappointment of the Beagle-2 lander's failure at Mars in 2003. 
 
 But officials here have underlined the fact that Schiaparelli was always viewed within the agency as a technology demonstrator - a project to give Europe the learning experience and the confidence to go ahead and land a more ambitious six-wheeled rover on Mars in 2021. 
 
 Mars - a tale of joy and failure 
 
 There have been about 15 attempts to get down to the surface of Mars, and they are split fairly evenly between success and failure. 
 
 The US space agency has been the most successful with seven successful landings on the Red Planet. 
 
 The Soviet Mars 3 probe landed softly but only transmitted data for 15 seconds. 
 
 The European Space Agency's last attempt to land on Mars was in 2003, with Beagle 2. But it never sent a signal from the surface. 
 
 "This is typical for a test," said Prof Jan Woerner, Esa's director general. "We did this in order to get data on how to land on Mars with European technology. Therefore, all the data we will get this night will be used to understand how to manage the next landing when we go with the rover." 
 
 This future vehicle is expected to use some of the same technology as Schiaparelli, including its doppler radar to sense the distance to the surface on descent, and its guidance, navigation and control algorithms. 
 
 What will concern commentators is that the budget for the rover is not yet secure. If Schiaparelli is indeed lost, Esa officials may find themselves having to work harder to explain to member states why the extra investment remains worthwhile. 
 
 Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
– We now have the most definitive sign yet—courtesy of a NASA orbiter—that the European Space Agency's Mars lander crashed onto the planet's surface in what the AP describes as a "fiery ball of rocket fuel." ESA lost contact with the Schiaparelli lander Wednesday, approximately 50 seconds before it was supposed to land on Mars. What exactly happened to the lander has been a mystery, but a crash seemed likely. Now, images from a NASA orbiter released Friday show an approximately 6,500-square-foot dark patch on the Martian surface a few miles from where the lander was supposed to touch down, the BBC reports. That spot is likely the result of an exploding lander. ESA reports the lander's parachute deployed then released as planned (it's probably the small light spot in the new image). But the lander's nine thrusters fired for only a few seconds instead of half a minute for some reason. The lander probably free-fell for up to 2.5 miles before hitting Mars at more than 185mph. And since the thrusters didn't use much of the stored rocket fuel, a decent-sized explosion was probably the result. NASA plans to get a better picture of the crash site next week. The lander was meant to be testing technology for another ESA landing in 2020. Its failure means NASA is still the only agency to successfully land a robotic vehicle on Mars, having done so several times.