TOUCHDOWN. The landing site ellipse for Schiaparellii measures 100 x 25 kilometers and lies on Meridiani Planum. Its southeast end touches the rim of Endeavour Crater, where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is currently exploring. (Image from the geological map poster talk listed below)
Five poster talks (PDF) at the 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, presented geological and engineering studies of the landing ellipse on Meridiani Planum for Schiaparelli. This is the non-roving entry, descent, and landing demonstrator module for the ExoMars 2016 mission.
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars is a two-phase program, with Russia as ESA’s collaborating partner. The first phase for ExoMars consists of a Trace Gas Orbiter and the Schiaparelli lander, both set for a 2016 Mars launch. The second part is planned to launch in 2018. It will land a solar-powered rover for a six-month mission to search for the existence of past or present life on Mars.
The conference posters (all links are to PDFs) present a geological map of the landing site to support engineering analysis, an assessment of the landing site, a study of dust and dunes in the area, a look at the granular sediments that the drill on the ExoMars 2018 rover will encounter, and a technique for automated detection of rocks at the landing site and elsewhere.