BERLIN — Scientists say Europe’s experimental Mars probe has hit the right spot but may have been destroyed in a fiery ball of rocket fuel because it was traveling too fast.

Pictures taken by a NASA satellite show a black spot where the Schiaparelli lander was meant to touch down Wednesday. The images end days of speculation over the probe’s likely fate following unexpected radio silence less than a minute before the planned landing.

The agency said in a statement that the probe dropped from a height of 2 to 4 kilometers (1.4 miles to 2.4 miles) and struck the surface at a speed exceeding 300 kph (186 mph), “therefore impacting at a considerable speed.”

It said the large disturbance captured in the NASA photographs may have been caused by the probe’s steep crash-landing.