REAL LIFE NEWS: WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE SCHIPARELLI LANDER
by Hazed
More information about what went wrong with the Shiparelli lander, causing it to crash onto the surface of Mars. It turns out that a miscalculation made the lander think it was under the ground rather than still two miles up.
Things went wrong after the lander deployed its parachute and ejected its heat shield. As it was slowly descending, its Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) calculated its rotation rate. But for some reason it make an error and transmitted bogus information to the craft’s navigation system. Using this incorrect reading, the nav system calculated a negative altitude. Oh dear.
After that everything went to pot culminating in the crash.
Actually, there is some good news. The mission programmers have managed to replicate this behaviour in computer simulations, which means they should be able to correct the anomaly, in time for the next mission in 2020.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-crazy-miscalculation-doomed-the-sciaparelli-lander-1789319670
Meanwhile, the ExoMars probe in orbit around Mars has beamed back some images of Mars: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/29/exomars_orbiter_closeup_images/
