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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."
Seriously? This is a joke... I mean, who thought sending a mission to Mars would be this hard?
Breakfast served all day!
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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darn, read it wrong in my excitement, still fingers crossed the lander is OK too
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Leela: No he didn't.
I think the little green men on Mars heard that the the Europeans have a long storied history of bringing diseases to the New Worlds and they blew it our of the sky with their ray guns.
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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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After a lengthy discussion with the ESA, I've been assured that the lander has definitely landed! On a side note, no word as to if it was a soft type landing or the usual hypersonic-impact-crater-forming type. ;)
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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.
You're missing Space Nazis from the list. Space Nazis are the most likely answer.
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Can't the aliens leave our spacecraft alone?
Another bold victory for the Mars defense force! Despite recent setbacks, we were able to repel the invaders. Let this be a message to the Terran aggressors: you just got luck last time.
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NASA uses metric.
No they don't, at least not exclusively.
How soon people forget...
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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?
People have been dying ever since there have been people. If you're going to use people dying as an excuse to not do something, nothing will ever get done. AND people will still die.
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Sorry, I mean to land a lander. Obviously the orbiter should orbit. Maybe this was their mistake? ;-)
That's because it'll be in medium light grey text on a light medium grey background.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Mars '98 Lander suffered a similar fate; in that case the rockets cut off too soon:
Mars Polar Lander
It's just temporarily restricted.
I think it just want some alone time. I know I do after doing a long journey...
They had a problem converting inches to millimeters.
As I understand it, the unexpected fuel usage was a combination of avoiding the boulder field (more than one rock), AND the fact NASA miscalculated the shape of the moon. (Scientifically, that very boulder field later produced some of their best rock samples.)
The size calculations were calibrated based on the gravity of the moon, but the moon is gravitationally lopsided compared to the location of its surface. If you spun the moon on a giant table-top like a child's top, it would appear to wobble slightly.
If you notice, the Earth-facing surface of the moon looks different than the back-facing side. The materials near the surface also have a different density between back and front.
This difference was not fully accounted for, and is at least partially why the fuel estimates were off.
Lesson: if you go somewhere new: leave plenty of margin for contingency. You are likely using flawed or imperfect assumptions.
Table-ized A.I.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS FROM THE COUNCIL: VICTORY! The Council of Elders has confirmed the blueworlders' resumption of aggression upon our noble red sands. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thusly: OKAY. Okay, so I'm K'Breel (even though anyone on Slashdot can assume the mantle merely by declaring themselves Speaker for the Council), and I'm late, but I'm merely chronologically late, not as in the Late Second Adjunctant to the Council Formerly Known As G'Ranee.
But domestic politics is beneath us tonight -- just take a glance at the blue world beneath us for a look at how bad that can get -- and let us focus on what's important: over the past sol or so, our Planetary Defense Force has been so good at pre-emptively distracting the blueworlders with tasks like landing comets, grabbing their prospective mates by their genitals, low-planetary orbit missions, and just general tribal infighting that we haven't had to shoot down any robotic invaders in quite some time. But when the opportunity presents itself, we take advantage of it, and so, we did. Hence the trivial elimination of yet another putative invader from elsewhere. We'd do it every day, except that the blueworlders lack the gelsacular fortitude to send us more targets. Now as to gelsacular fortitude, on to Second Adjunctant G'Ranee...
When a junior reporter pointed out that the destroyed invader was merely a technology demonstrator built on the cheap to see if a landing was possible, and that the blueworlders' actual payload was safely in orbit, K'Breel had the reporter's gelsacs launched into orbit alongside those of G'Ranee for a closer look.