Europe sent a tiny lander on a three-day, million-kilometre (621,000-mile) trek to the Martian surface Sunday to test-drive technology for a daring mission to scout the Red Planet for evidence of life. There were nervous moments for ground controllers when the unmanned mothership, dubbed Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), stopped sending status updates just as it despatched the paddle pool-sized lander, Schiaparelli, on its way.
"Everything is back on track," spokeswoman Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin of the European Space Operations Centre told AFP by telephone after an anxious hour of resetting commands and waiting for a response.
There were "a lot of relieved people," at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, she added - some 175 million kilometres (109 miles) from where the space manoeuvre was executed.
The TGO and Schiaparelli, launched into space in March, comprise phase one of a joint European-Russian Mars-probing mission named ExoMars.
As planned, the 600-kilogramme (1,300-pound) Schiaparelli separated from its mothership TGO at 1442 GMT, after a seven-month, 496-million-km trek from Earth.
It is scheduled to arrive at Mars next Wednesday, while the TGO must head for Mars orbit.
ExoMars is Europe's first attempt at reaching our neighbouring planet's hostile surface after its first failed bid 13 years ago to place the first non-American rover on Mars.
The TGO's job, apart from carrying Schiaparelli, will be to sniff the Red Planet's thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere for gases possibly excreted by living organisms, however small or primitive.
Schiaparelli's purpose, in turn, is to test entry and landing technology for a subsequent rover which will mark the second phase and high point of the ExoMars mission. After a two-year funding delay, the rover is due for launch in 2020, arriving about six months later to explore the Red Planet and drill into it, in search of extraterrestrial life - past or present.
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