Europe lost contact with Mars lander 1 minute before touchdown

[geronl]

Europe lost contact with Mars lander 1 minute before touchdown

The European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed Thursday that the Schiaparelli spacecraft went silent less than a minute before it was set to reach the Martian surface Wednesday.

ESA mission managers said Thursday morning that they need more time to understand what went wrong with Schiaparelli, and to figure out exactly where and in what condition the test lander ended up. But the ExoMars team was optimistic that the capsule had collected enough data during its descent to set the stage for the next phase of the mission: the planned 2020 launch of a life-hunting ExoMars rover.

excerpt

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/10/21/europe-lost-contact-with-mars-lander-1-minute-before-touchdown.html

Disappointing!

[Gefn]

But they are picking up transmissions from Grover's Mill, NJ.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Leave space exploration to the Americans will ya'?

[guitar4jesus]

But they are picking up transmissions from Grover's Mill, NJ.

 

[Gefn]

now they are reporting it crash landed.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/european-space-agency-experimental-mars-probe-crash-landed-42970507

What a shame. Breaking story.

[LateForLunch]

If God had meant for us to travel in space, He would have given us chitinous shells and allowed us to breathe solar wind.

[Gefn]

I travel in space in my dreams. Or when I look into the skies with my telescope.

Imagination is wonderful. One dream would be to be on our moon and see the Earth rise.

[r9etb]

Europe lost contact with Mars lander 1 minute before touchdown

Disappointing!

Damn. 

For whatever reason, the failure rate for Mars missions is incredibly high. 

I wonder if the failure mode is like what happened to the Mars Polar Lander: "The Mars Polar Lander's December 1999 demise apparently occurred when the lander thought the jolt of its landing leg deployment was touchdown - and shut its engines off."

[kevindavis007]

Damn. 

For whatever reason, the failure rate for Mars missions is incredibly high. 

I wonder if the failure mode is like what happened to the Mars Polar Lander: "The Mars Polar Lander's December 1999 demise apparently occurred when the lander thought the jolt of its landing leg deployment was touchdown - and shut its engines off."

That is the drawback of the unmanned missions.

[Smokin Joe]

Damn. 

For whatever reason, the failure rate for Mars missions is incredibly high. 

I wonder if the failure mode is like what happened to the Mars Polar Lander: "The Mars Polar Lander's December 1999 demise apparently occurred when the lander thought the jolt of its landing leg deployment was touchdown - and shut its engines off."

Oops!

[Gefn]

Oops!

I miss the kaboom. 

[Joe Wooten]

They found the crash site.



Looks like the thrusters shut down too early....

[geronl]

sure looks like the spot.

[Just_Victor]

Damn. 

For whatever reason, the failure rate for Mars missions is incredibly high. 

I wonder if the failure mode is like what happened to the Mars Polar Lander: "The Mars Polar Lander's December 1999 demise apparently occurred when the lander thought the jolt of its landing leg deployment was touchdown - and shut its engines off."

If correct, that's be a pretty serious engineering flaw.  Full system test probably would have caught that.

[Joe Wooten]

If correct, that's be a pretty serious engineering flaw.  Full system test probably would have caught that.

Yeah, but the PM probably nixed that testing because the project was already over budget........

[Just_Victor]

Yeah, but the PM probably nixed that testing because the project was already over budget........

Tests are an easy budget fix.  And the only impact is risk.  And I've been on enough projects to know that the PM who makes the call will inevitably leave the project and never get blamed for the consequences.

[Cripplecreek]

Orbital insertions and landings get harder with greater distance.

The automated systems work fine as long as there are no unforeseen circumstances but for last minute intuitive adjustments takes a human.

[LateForLunch]

Orbital insertions and landings get harder with greater distance.

The automated systems work fine as long as there are no unforeseen circumstances but for last minute intuitive adjustments takes a human.

What I have read is that the likely cause was an onboard sensor-system malfunction which interpreted the physical jarring of the retro rockets coming on as the impact that would have been experienced when the craft landed - so the computer shut off the engines. What is computer language code for, "Duh"?

Whichever department was responsible for reviewing the system control feature which sensed motion and issued commands in response didn't do their job. The question would have inevitably come up in the review process - what physical motion events could cause the sensor to respond by shutting down   the engines? Some PM in the chain of command took a long lunch instead of doing an exhaustive review of the possible scenarios resulting from inclusion of that control feature in the overall system protocols.

So yes, this is a similar error to what crashed that other probe because some project manager in the chain-of-command on that mission missed  the critically important need for converting miles to kilometers.

Comparatively inexpensive Microsoft Windows operating system programs and other O.S.'s have built-in safety features which prompt the user whenever automatic commands or functions want to make a change that is potentially dangerous or could cause a problem - why can't they install a similar feature in the computer control systems for a billion-dollar space probe?

"WARNING! The motion sensor has detected an event and wants to shut down the engines. Should the engines be shut down? Yes or no?"

Even if they needed the system to shut off the engines quickly without time for prompting, they couldn't build in a feature that lets them know so if it's a mistake, they could restart the engines?

"The motion sensor system detected an event and has shut down the engines. Do you want to restart the engines? Yes or no?"

[Cripplecreek]

The very first manned moon landing would have ended up with an abort or a crash had computers been running the show.

[Just_Victor]

...

So yes, this is a similar error to what crashed that other probe because some project manager in the chain-of-command on that mission missed  the critically important need for converting miles to kilometers.

Comparatively inexpensive Microsoft Windows operating system programs and other O.S.'s have built-in safety features which prompt the user whenever automatic commands or functions want to make a change that is potentially dangerous or could cause a problem - why can't they install a similar feature in the computer control systems for a billion-dollar space probe?

"WARNING! The motion sensor has detected an event and wants to shut down the engines. Should the engines be shut down? Yes or no?"

Even if they needed the system to shut off the engines quickly without time for prompting, they couldn't build in a feature that lets them know so if it's a mistake, they could restart the engines?

"The motion sensor system detected an event and has shut down the engines. Do you want to restart the engines? Yes or no?"

The problem of course, is that the travel time for the command to get from Mars to Earth for the controllers to make a decision is 4.3 minutes at the shortest distance, and as much as 21 minutes at the longest.  So with a round trip of ~10 minutes best case, the mission is over before the command can be executed.

Human on board is the best fix for programming unknowns.

[r9etb]

The problem of course, is that the travel time for the command to get from Mars to Earth for the controllers to make a decision is 4.3 minutes at the shortest distance, and as much as 21 minutes at the longest.  So with a round trip of ~10 minutes best case, the mission is over before the command can be executed.

This brings up a point that I often make in my classes.  When you're designing a spacecraft or planning a mission, it is always necessary to ask, "what's the worst that can happen?"  A lot of times the answer is "not much," but in some cases -- autonomous landing on a planet, for instance -- the answer is, "loss of mission."

For such cases, it is necessary not only to carefully design, but also to carefully and comprehensively test that portion of the mission to ensure that the risks of "loss of mission" are understood and, to the extent possible, mitigated or eliminated.  This imposes costs, obviously, but the question is: does loss of mission outweigh the cost savings?  (In some cases, cost may actually win the argument.)

There are numerous examples of what happens when you don't ask the question: The Mars Polar Lander failure could have been identified and mitigated through testing and software dynamic simulation, but that was deemed too expensive.  The one test that would have identified the "wrong prescription" for the Hubble telescope, likewise.  The recent SpaceX explosion destroyed the payload, for no good reason other than considerations of cost and a couple of days of schedule.  Perhaps this lander failure had the same root cause.....

But it seems that they maybe either didn't ask the question (and therefore identify the problem in test), or their cost/risk decision was ill-founded.

Human on board is the best fix for programming unknowns.

Absolutely.  The only problem being that it's really expensive to keep humans alive....

[Joe Wooten]

Tests are an easy budget fix.  And the only impact is risk.  And I've been on enough projects to know that the PM who makes the call will inevitably leave the project and never get blamed for the consequences.

Yep. Happens in all fields and all organizations.

[r9etb]

Yep. Happens in all fields and all organizations.

Agreed -- software projects, in particular....

But when it comes to things like space missions, failure tends to be concentrated in such a way that it's difficult to pretend that everything is actually fine.

[Just_Victor]

This brings up a point that I often make in my classes.  When you're designing a spacecraft or planning a mission, it is always necessary to ask, "what's the worst that can happen?"  A lot of times the answer is "not much," but in some cases -- autonomous landing on a planet, for instance -- the answer is, "loss of mission."

For such cases, it is necessary not only to carefully design, but also to carefully and comprehensively test that portion of the mission to ensure that the risks of "loss of mission" are understood and, to the extent possible, mitigated or eliminated.  This imposes costs, obviously, but the question is: does loss of mission outweigh the cost savings?  (In some cases, cost may actually win the argument.)

Absolutely.

There are numerous examples of what happens when you don't ask the question: The Mars Polar Lander failure could have been identified and mitigated through testing and software dynamic simulation, but that was deemed too expensive.  The one test that would have identified the "wrong prescription" for the Hubble telescope, likewise.  The recent SpaceX explosion destroyed the payload, for no good reason other than considerations of cost and a couple of days of schedule.  Perhaps this lander failure had the same root cause.....

But it seems that they maybe either didn't ask the question (and therefore identify the problem in test), or their cost/risk decision was ill-founded.

Absolutely.  The only problem being that it's really expensive to keep humans alive....

Of course with human space flight we get to deal with a whole new class of failure resulting in "loss of crew."  In those scenarios, "loss of mission," seems pretty benign in severity.

[LateForLunch]

Absolutely.
Of course with human space flight we get to deal with a whole new class of failure resulting in "loss of crew."  In those scenarios, "loss of mission," seems pretty benign in severity.

Ideally of course, that is true. However, as I recall, one of the reasons that the urgent attempt of a junior project manager to stop the Challenger launch because of a danger of O-ring failure was frustrated, was that the senior NASA manager(s) overruled his assessment and decided that the "risk factor was acceptable". I wonder if the crew of Challenger  if asked prior to launch would have agreed that the risk factor for O-Ring failure was "acceptable".

The senior managers who made that bad call on the O-Rings basically skated. None were fired or brought up on negligence charges or anything more severe than getting a little bad press, being forced to take a few weeks off with pay, make a lateral transfer or to take a slightly earlier retirement (with full pension and benefits). This proclivity for our system to insulate people against being held accountable for lethally bad decisions that cost people their lives seems to be a recurring issue.

The problem is that the opposite approach (such as taken by the Chicoms, the Russkies, etc.) of taking people out and shooting them when there are catastrophic failures, doesn't reduce the number of incidents either.