European Mars Lander, Orbiter to Make Tag Team Arrival at Red Planet

After seven months of space travel, the European Schiaparelli spacecraft is only a couple days away from making its final decent to the surface of the Red Planet — and the stakes are high. The Schiaparelli lander — part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) ExoMars 2016 mission to Mars — was launched into space with the Trace Gas Orbiter on March 14. In preparation for Schiaparelli's decent to Mars on Wednesday (Oct. 19), the Trace Gas Orbiter released the lander modul