NASA releases first color photos of Mars lander Schiaparelli’s crash site

American space agency NASA has released the first color images of the European Space Agency’s Mars lander Schiaparelli’s crash site, providing new details about the lander’s abortive touchdown attempt.

According to ESA, Schiaparelli slammed hard into surface of the Red Planet while attempting to land on October 19, 2016. Project managers guessed that failure of the spacecraft’s descent-slowing thrusters caused the crash.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was able to quickly spot the spacecraft’s remains with its low-resolution camera. A few days back, it imaged the crash site in greater details using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) image snapper. Now, it has provided the first color images of the site.

The new images show numerous bright spots near the main crater where the spacecraft hit. Previous images also showed these features but it was not clear at the time whether they were merely “noise.” Now, it is clear that the spots are real objects – remains of Schiaparelli.

In a blog post, ESA wrote, “For example, a number of the bright white spots around the dark region interpreted as the impact site are confirmed as real objects - they are not likely to be imaging 'noise' - and therefore are most likely fragments of Schiaparelli.”

The new images also show a large structure that is believed to be the spacecraft’s parachute. It has changed its location since last week’s images were captured, likely due to the Martian wind.