IMAGES SHOW MARS PROBE CRASHED

FRANKFURT: Images taken by a Nasa Mars orbiter indicate that a missing European space probe fell to the Red Planet’s surface from a height of 2-4km kilometres and was destroyed on impact, the European Space Agency said on Friday. The disc-shaped 577kg Schiaparelli probe, part of the Russian-European ExoMars programme to search for evidence of life on Mars, descended on Wednesday to test technologies for a rover that scientists hope to send to the surface of the planet in 2020. But contact to the vehicle was lost around 50 seconds before the expected landing time, leaving its fate uncertain until the Nasa images were received.