LIVE NOW: Watch ESA's ExoMars Schiaparelli Lander landing on Mars

[Arthur]

http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival

 

[Arthur]

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Watch_ExoMars_arrival_and_landing

50 minutes to landing

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Going to say hi to Matt Damon?

 

[Arthur]

If all went well, Schiaparelli should be intact on Mars.

ESA:

17:12 CEST:*End of planned Schiaparelli transmission. Initial signals were received via the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) as Schiaparelli descended to the surface of Mars, but no signal indicating touchdown yet.*This is not unexpected due to the very faint nature of the signal received at GMRT.*A clearer assessment of the situation will come when ESA's Mars Express will have relayed the recording of Schiaparelli's entry, descent and landing.

 

[Zyraz]

ESA Engineers @ lander


[video=youtube;d6lYeTWdYLw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6lYeTWdYLw[/video]

 

[Arthur]

Not a peep from the Schiaparelli lander.

 

[Arthur]

The Beeb reports:

Fears grow for European Schiaparelli Mars lander

There are growing fears a European probe that attempted to land on Mars on Wednesday has been lost.

Tracking of the Schiaparelli robot's radio signals was dropped less than a minute before it was expected to touch down on the Red Planet's surface.
Satellites at Mars have attempted to shed light on the probe's status, so far without success.

One American satellite even called out to Schiaparelli to try to get it to respond.

The fear will be that the robot has crashed and been destroyed. The European Space Agency, however, is a long way from formally calling that outcome.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Oh dear.... Hopefully not metres and feet again.

 

[Arthur]

Seems the 'chute was ditched too soon, so another multi-million-euro mess on Mars.

 

[crackersa]

Seems the 'chute was ditched too soon, so another multi-million-euro mess on Mars.

Second loss for them?

 

[Hamish McPanji]

Seems the 'chute was ditched too soon, so another multi-million-euro mess on Mars.

They should just put loads or organisms and plant materia and stuff on these things. Then by the time the humans land they will have supplies

 

[crackersa]

They should just put loads or organisms and plant materia and stuff on these things. Then by the time the humans land they will have supplies

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

*splat*

 

[Arthur]

A prelim report from ESA says the Schiaparelli lander probably pranged because an onboard computer was overwhelmed by data saturation.

"As Schiaparelli descended under its parachute, its radar Doppler altimeter functioned correctly and the measurements were included in the guidance, navigation and control system. However, saturation – maximum measurement – of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) had occurred shortly after the parachute deployment. The IMU measures the rotation rates of the vehicle. Its output was generally as predicted except for this event, which persisted for about one second – longer than would be expected.

When merged into the navigation system, the erroneous information generated an estimated altitude that was negative – that is, below ground level. This in turn successively triggered a premature release of the parachute and the backshell, a brief firing of the braking thrusters and finally activation of the on-ground systems as if Schiaparelli had already landed. In reality, the vehicle was still at an altitude of around 3.7 km.

This behaviour has been clearly reproduced in computer simulations of the control system’s response to the erroneous information."

More here.

 

[Hamish McPanji]

Am just surprised that they don't send people to orbit Mars and come back. Surely that should be the first step in the process.

So, manned trip to Mars with packages.
Drop off packages, using human intelligence to deploy them in case override or modifications required.
Slingshot back to earth, not forgetting to wave at next batch of astronauts while on the way back.

 

[genetic]

Am just surprised that they don't send people to orbit Mars and come back. Surely that should be the first step in the process.

So, manned trip to Mars with packages.
Drop off packages, using human intelligence to deploy them in case override or modifications required.
Slingshot back to earth, not forgetting to wave at next batch of astronauts while on the way back.

Cheaper, safer and easier to send probes (for now).

Also how do you expect humans to override or modify a probe on the martian surface whilst in orbit? Might as well do it from Earth.

 

[Hamish McPanji]

Cheaper, safer and easier to send probes (for now).

Also how do you expect humans to override or modify a probe on the martian surface whilst in orbit? Might as well do it from Earth.

From earth the time delay to react to the telemetry coming from the probe is too long (4 to 24 minutes) to be able to respond quickly enough. In addition to that there are periods during the drop where the probe could go dark.

From orbit of Mars however, the astronaut could in theory manual override the system if it is failing in a matter of seconds. And since he/she would have dropped the probe, the likely hood of lack of visibility/radio signal will not be so much of an issue....the astronaut will have direct contact with at least 30% of the planets surface to land the probe in.

The Mars atmosphere is thinner too, and less gravity..so likely less possibility of a manual landing going wrong than earth

 

[Oopsie]

At least the Mars Rover that landed in 2005 and was expected to expire after 90 days is still operational after 11 years.

 

[biometrics]

A prelim report from ESA says the Schiaparelli lander probably pranged because an onboard computer was overwhelmed by data saturation.

"As Schiaparelli descended under its parachute, its radar Doppler altimeter functioned correctly and the measurements were included in the guidance, navigation and control system. However, saturation – maximum measurement – of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) had occurred shortly after the parachute deployment. The IMU measures the rotation rates of the vehicle. Its output was generally as predicted except for this event, which persisted for about one second – longer than would be expected.

When merged into the navigation system, the erroneous information generated an estimated altitude that was negative – that is, below ground level. This in turn successively triggered a premature release of the parachute and the backshell, a brief firing of the braking thrusters and finally activation of the on-ground systems as if Schiaparelli had already landed. In reality, the vehicle was still at an altitude of around 3.7 km.

This behaviour has been clearly reproduced in computer simulations of the control system’s response to the erroneous information."

More here.

I would think for missions of this kind defensive coding is in order. It reacted to a below ground level reading. Fail.

 

[Hamish McPanji]

I would think for missions of this kind defensive coding is in order. It reacted to a below ground level reading. Fail.

I think it's aliens personally. But nobody would believe me