#Mars_lander smashed into ground at 540km/h after misjudging its altitude | Science | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/24/mars-lander-smashed-into-ground-at-540kmh-after-misjudging-its-altitude
hat crashed on Mars last month flew into the red planet at 540km/h (335mph) instead of gently gliding to a stop, after a computer misjudged its altitude, the European Space Agency has said.
#Schiaparelli was on a test-run for a future rover meant to seek out evidence of life, past or present, but it fell silent seconds before its scheduled touchdown on 19 October.
After trawling through vast amounts of data, the ESA said on Wednesday that while much of the mission went according to plan, a computer that measured the rotation of the lander hit a maximum reading, knocking other calculations off track.
That led the navigation system to think the lander was much lower than it was, causing its parachute and braking thrusters to be deployed prematurely.
“The erroneous information generated an estimated altitude that was negative – that is, below ground level,” the ESA said in a statement.
