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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?
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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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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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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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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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It's just temporarily restricted.