** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

ExoMars, from separation to landing starting today:


The Trace Gas Orbiter will release its Schiaparelli lander for a three day coast and a six minute descent to the Martian surface.The lander, which was designed to demonstrate technologies for entry, descent and landing on Mars, is heading for the Meridiani Planum. This is an area that is currently being studied by NASA’s Opportunity rover and Europe’s Mars Express orbiter.

On 19 October, the Schiaparelli lander will be activated a few hours before reaching the Martian atmosphere, when it will be travelling at some 21 000 km/h. The front heatshield – covered with 90 insulating tiles – will be subjected to temperatures of up to 1500 degrees Celsius.
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Expedition 49-50 Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryzhikov, Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Shane Kimbrough of NASA along with their backups, Alexander Misurkin, Nikolai Tikhonov of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei of NASA preparing for launch on October 19:

 
China have successfully launched their 6th manned spaceflight mission, Shenzhou 11. Launch was at 23:30 UTC, October 16th from the Jiuquan launch site:


The Shenzhou 11 crew capsule will bring two Chinese astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong to the Tiangong-2 space laboratory which launched last month on September 15th.
 
The big day at Mars is tomorrow, the 19th so we have ExoMars arrival and landing details:

19 October: TGO Mars orbit insertion and Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing on Mars (atmospheric entry expected 15:42 BST / 16:42 CEST, landing 15:48 BST / 16:48 CEST)

20 October: Update on Schiaparelli status; descent images expected

21+ October: Schiaparelli status reports until end of mission

Note: Times shown above are actual event times at Mars; the one-way signal travel time between Earth and Mars is currently just under 10 minutes.
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Live mission updates can be found here:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Live_updates_ExoMars_arrival_and_landing


Schiaparelli’s descent to Mars in real time:


Schiaparelli’s descent trajectory:




Live coverage (14:00–16:15 BST) is here with timings:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Watch_ExoMars_arrival_and_landing



See you on Mars tomorrow!
 
We have to wait for news:

End of planned Schiaparelli transmission. Initial signals were received via the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) as Schiaparelli descended to the surface of Mars, but no signal indicating touchdown yet. This is not unexpected due to the very faint nature of the signal received at GMRT. A clearer assessment of the situation will come when ESA's Mars Express will have relayed the recording of Schiaparelli's entry, descent and landing.
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TGO has been a success, all the science can be done in the future. The mission team is still processing data to understand what happened in the last seconds before Schiaparelli landed but the heat shield has worked and there is a lot data from the lander before it stopped communication. Unfortunately at this point in time we don't know whether the lander has been destroyed or sent a signal from the surface.
 
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