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Schiaparelli Mars Probe's Parachute 'Jettisoned Too Early', Whereabouts Still Unknown (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Europe's Schiaparelli lander did not behave as expected as it headed down to the surface of Mars on Wednesday. Telemetry data recovered from the probe during its descent indicates that its parachute was jettisoned too early. The rockets it was supposed to use to bring itself to a standstill just above the ground also appeared to fire for too short a time. The European Space Agency (Esa) has not yet conceded that the lander crashed but the mood is not positive. Experts will continue to analyse the data and they may also try to call out to Schiaparelli in the blind hope that it is actually sitting on the Red Planet intact. In addition, the Americans will use one of their satellites at Mars to image the targeted landing zone to see if they can detect any hardware. Although, the chances are slim because the probe is small. For the moment, all Esa has to work with is the relatively large volume of engineering data Schiaparelli managed to transmit back to the "mothership" that dropped it off at Mars - the Trace Gas Orbiter.
Yeah, I do this all the time in Kerbal Space Program. From my experience, they just need to make sure the parachute icons aren't red or yellow when they deploy them. It always sucks to go through a whole mission only to mess up your landing and waste everything. I suggest they revert to launch and try again.
Come on guys, was this not checked, double-checked, and tested?
The simulations all ran successfully on "Lunar Lander".
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Someone should go to jail for a very long time as soon as we figure out exactly what was screwed up.
Really. Criminal conviction, huh? Programmer in prison? Are you even listening to yourself?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hey, everyone "jettisons too early" once in a while.
I was very disappointed and angry at the ESA Press Conference this morning. Last night when they suspected (knew) [There is no way this landing was designed to not return a success signal immediately] the Lander had crashed they silenced everyone and announced a press conference at 10 AM the next morning.
At the Press Conference they emphasised the success of the orbiter and mentioned NOTHING at all about data from the lander. They left that all to questions from the Press. Basically all questions from the Press were about the lander and the data (and they were good questions - no stupid questions came), and they drip fed a piece of info at a time to the journalists.
I believe the suits at ESA were in damage control because they are scared about losing funding for the 2020 lander so they mentioned NOTHING about the crashed lander, so that when politicians check on the press releases/conferences in months to come there is NO info on the crash, but in a few days the world will know anyway, especially if NASA gets a photo of the impact and debris.
They did not make any statements at all (e.g. yes we got data from the Lander, the rockets fired for only 3-4 seconds, something went wrong with the parachute and we suspect a very hard landing) in a controlled and orderly way, they forced the journalists to extract it from them relunctantly.
I was super disappointed about scientists playing politics and covering up what they obviously knew the audience wanted to know. It was sickening.
And, yes, I live in Europe and yes, I want my tax Euros to fund the 2020 Lander, but I'm angry at scientists playing politics and ignoring the audience who wanted to know what happened last night and they deliberately said nothing.
Someone should go to jail for a very long time as soon as we figure out exactly what was screwed up.
Really. Criminal conviction, huh? Programmer in prison? Are you even listening to yourself?
Would it be the Programmer? Or the Tester? Or the Project Manager that signed off on it? Or should it be the entire team?
Hillary Clinton. Trump says we should blame her for everything that has gone wrong - ever. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not only that, but this specific probe's landing was an experiment in preparation for a future mission in 2020. The main thrust (no pun intended) of the mission was to position the mothership which will be gathering most of the data.
It's disappointing the probe failed, but the information gathered and the root cause analysis of the experiment should provide good data for the next mission.
That's what she said.