View from the north-west of the Schiaparelli landing ellipse
View from the north-west of the Schiaparelli landing ellipse
The shaded ellipse shows the 15 kilometre-wide and 30 kilometre-long area in Meridiani Planum, where the ExoMars lander Schiaparelli will touch down on 19 October 2016. The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos want to use it to test the technologies and materials that should be used in 2020 for the second part of the ExoMars mission, when a mobile research laboratory will examine Mars for traces of life. There is also a weather station on board.
The crater in the background is called Endeavour: It has a diameter of 22 kilometres and is currently being explored by the small NASA Opportunity Rover, the ‘marathon runner’ of the vehicles that have explored Mars and the Moon: In eleven and a half years, the Rover has travelled more than 42 kilometres – precisely the Olympic marathon distance of 42.195 kilometres.
