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."

Comments

space agency cooperation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars seems very difficult. NASA has had its failures there too, but on the balance, NASA seems to have a far better track record at doing complex things on Mars than anybody else out there.

Which leads to the question: does NASA not share its magic recipes with the ESA? They have done shitloads of research into how to successfully land craft on other planets, and even run rovers. It's very hard from an engineering perspective. Do they not share the fruits of that research and labor with agencies like the ESA, so to improve everybody's odds?