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Well their actual mission was the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Since they were sending hardware to Mars orbit anyways, they decided to try and attempt a landing.

• nixos 10y ago
  Yes, the point wasn't the lander but the _landing_ . If the landing works, they can try an expensive rover in 2020. Now, they can fix what they think broke, but they're never sure until it (fails to) land.
  • dr_zoidberg 10y ago
    Or if it lands they can say "see? we learned to land with the crashed Schiaparelli, so it was good sending it in the first place". But a succesful landing would've been better, now they may face a few objections arising from the failure.
    • nixos 10y ago
      >Or if it lands they can say "see? we learned to land with the crashed Schiaparelli, so it was good sending it in the first place" Failures may not be bad, but they're still failures. Apollo 1 was a failure. Sure, it helped NASA make future spaceflight safe, and may have saved more lives in the long run (Apollo 13 makes it even) , but it didn't accomplish its goal. Especially that a successful lander is a reality check. We did it once and we can do it again. A failure doesn't say anything. It could have been a stuck thruster, it's fixed, and then the crush-zone is found to be defective. That's why first (and test) flights tend to be cheaper and failure prone.
      • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        > Especially that a successful lander is a reality check. We did it once and we can do it again. Not necessarily. A successful landing may be "we got really lucky". You may not succeed a second time, even with the exact same hardware and technique.