 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter view of Schiaparelli landing site 
 
 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site 
 
 NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has identified new markings on the surface of the Red Planet that are believed to be related to ESA’s ExoMars Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing technology demonstrator module. The image released today has a resolution of 6 metres per pixel and shows two new features on the surface when compared to an image from the same camera taken in May this year. 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. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Schiaparelli's landing sequence - stage by stage 
 
 Further photographic insights will come from MRO next week when it flies back over the scene with its high-resolution (HiRISE) camera.
– 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.