An early attempt to confirm Europe's first Mars landing has failed in an ominous echo of the unsuccessful Beagle 2 mission in 2003.

But hope is not lost, because scientists were never certain of making direct contact with the Schiaparelli lander.

The probe was designed to have its "all well" signal relayed by an orbiting spacecraft, Mars Express. In this case the signal would not be received on Earth until some time after the landing, due to have taken place at 3.48pm, UK time.

As a short-cut scientists tried to listen in to Schiaparelli directly using a powerful Earth-based tracking station.

However, even though an earlier faint transmission from the lander was received just before its descent, no signal confirming the landing was forthcoming.

Open University space scientist Dr Manish Patel, who is closely involved in the mission, said from the European Space Agency (Esa) operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany: "It's not good, but it was always an experimental approach, largely untested, so we can't really do too much interpreting about what's happened.

"We have to step back and look at things as a whole.

"It's a case of waiting - but perhaps more nervously than before."

Beagle 2 was a British-built craft designed to look for signs of life that hitched a ride to the Red Planet with Mars Express.

After it detached from its mothership and headed for the surface, anxious minutes of waiting turned into hours until scientists finally had to admit the probe was lost.

It was only discovered in 2015 that Beagle 2 had descended to the surface in one piece but had been unable to communicate after failing to deploy solar panels.

Schiaparelli separated from its own mothership, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, on Sunday after a 500 million km (310 million miles) seven-month journey through space.

At 3.42pm, UK time, it was due to begin a "six minutes of terror" journey through the Martian atmosphere. During this time the probe was travelling on autopilot and mission controllers on Earth could only sit and wait - hence the "terror".

Although it carries some instruments, Schiaparelli's main job is to test out the Russian-designed landing system for a future ExoMars rover mission due to be launched in 2020.

Initially slowed by the friction on its heat shield, the probe should have deployed its parachute at an altitude of about 11km (6.8 miles). As it neared the ground, three clusters of retro rockets were supposed to fire, slowing the craft's speed to less than 7km/h (4.3mph) two metres (6.5ft) from the surface. The rockets were then due to switch off, allowing the probe to drop the rest of the way.

A special crushable structure built into the spacecraft was meant to cushion against the final shock.

During the descent Schiaparelli was programmed to take pictures of the approaching Martian terrain.

The landing site is Meridiani Planum, a flat region that interests scientists because it contains an ancient layer of haematite. On Earth, the iron oxide mineral almost always forms in a watery environment.

Schiaparelli was due to spend about four days gathering weather data before its batteries ran out.

While the drama of the landing was taking place, TGO successfully settled itself in orbit around Mars with a 139-minute main engine burn.

Starting next year, the orbiter will sniff the Martian atmosphere for traces of methane and help scientists decide if it has a geological or biological origin. On Earth, methane is chiefly produced by billions of bacterial organisms, many of which live in the guts of animals such as cows.

ExoMars Rover will deploy a six-wheeled mobile laboratory to the surface of Mars to drill into the soil and look for definitive signs of past or present life.

Earlier, Dr Patel, an ExoMars TGO lead investigator, explained the difficulties of landing on Mars.

He said: "The classic problem with Mars is its thin atmosphere. If you have a thick atmosphere, it naturally slows you down, and if there's no atmosphere, it's easy. But Mars has a very thin atmosphere that slows you down a bit, but can still cause a lot of problems. It varies a lot; you get waves and ripples which are unpredictable.

"Dust impacting on the heat shield can also be a hazard, but I'm told that's one that can be compensated for."

Shortly before 5pm Esa said it had received a transmission from Mars Express.

There was no immediate confirmation from the signal that Schiaparelli had landed safely.

There were jubilant scenes at the mission control centre when it was confirmed that TGO had successfully inserted itself into orbit after a 139-minute engine burn.

But there was still no news on Schiaparelli as efforts continued to process the data from Mars Express.