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ESA Lander's Signal Cut Out Just Before It Was Supposed To Land on Mars (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an ArsTechnica report: On Wednesday, the European Space Agency sought to become the second entity to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars with its Schiaparelli lander. And everything seemed to be going swimmingly right up until the point that Schiaparelli was to touch down. The European scientists had been tracking the descent of Schiaparelli through an array of radio telescopes near Pune, India and were able to record the moment when the vehicle exited a plasma blackout. The scientists also received a signal that indicated parachute deployment. But during the critical final moments, when nine hydrazine-powered thrusters were supposed to fire to arrest Schiaparelli's descent, the signal disappeared. At that point, the European Space Agency's webcast went silent for several minutes before one of the flight directors could be heard to say, "We expected the signal to continue, but clearly it did not. We don't want to jump to conclusions."
That's the orbiter.
The lander is what is in question, and there's been no sign that it has been successfully acquired by the orbiter or anybody else.
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USA/NASA has had many successful landers and the Soviets had a lander survive for 14.5 seconds after touch down. That's not great, but considering the ESA lander lost contact after firing the retro rockets before touch down, I wouldn't celebrate just yet.
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Successful? Maybe it did, but we don't know that it did--unless you define "success" as to include crash landings. I don't think that's what they meant. It may have landed with no other damage than to the radio or antenna, but since they want to communicate with it after all trouble of building it and launching it, I still would not call it success. They'd better hurry--the only power source they have is a battery that is not projected to last more than 8 martian days.
As we've seen, Mars is a hard destination.
Even in the 60's the moon landings were done by computer. Could a live pilot have executed no, not with the equipment they sent, the fuel use and tolerances for error were far to small.
I believe on Apollo 11 a human had to take over on the landing.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Even in the 60's the moon landings were done by computer. Could a live pilot have executed no, not with the equipment they sent, the fuel use and tolerances for error were far to small.
Nice story. Now here's what really happened: http://www.space.com/26593-apo...
40 seconds of fuel left, according to post-mission analysis.
He flew the LEM for a longer period than any simulation. The 1201/1202 errors were caused by Armstrong leaving docking radar on during descent, thinking it would save time if they had to abort. Not tested in simulation, probably because it was a checklist item.
Given the state of the art at the time, a human pilot was essential. Today we would expect an automated landing to succeed, given the massively improved capabilities.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.