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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

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Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#21

Post by Ma8ee »

nicholasjon wrote: post #18
yummybear wrote: post #2

What a shame. The only consolation, if any, is that they are not the first ones to crash on Mars. If I remember correctly the historic chances of landing successfully on Mars is about 50/50.

Reminds of the "Seven Minutes of Terror" video that NASA put out ahead of the Curiosity landing explaining how they intended to make it safely to the surface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s (Note: I get goosebumps every time I watch this, absolutely amazing problem solving.)

I'm still amazed that it succeeded. I was prepared to bet quite a bit of money that at least one of the many quite complicated stages of the landing would fail. I'm happy I was wrong.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#22

Post by raverbashing »

Aqua_Geek wrote: post #3

> Estimates are that Schiaparelli dropped from a height of between 2 and 4 kilometres, therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 300 km/h. Ouch. It will be interesting to read the results of the investigation as to why the landing thrusters turned off prematurely.

Yes, it seems they made quite a dent on Mars

I'm not so sure that this should be interpreted as "thrusters turning off prematurely" rather, it getting to the point of shut-off sooner (and faster) OR it stopped because they hit the ground

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#24

Post by protomyth »

beamatronic wrote: post #13

It is so bad ass that when we have a question about something that happened on another planet we can just point one of our other robots' cameras at the site!

I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#25

Post by dr_zoidberg »

raverbashing wrote: post #22
Aqua_Geek wrote: post #3

> Estimates are that Schiaparelli dropped from a height of between 2 and 4 kilometres, therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 300 km/h. Ouch. It will be interesting to read the results of the investigation as to why the landing thrusters turned off prematurely.

Yes, it seems they made quite a dent on Mars I'm not so sure that this should be interpreted as "thrusters turning off prematurely" rather, it getting to the point of shut-off sooner (and faster) OR it stopped because they hit the ground

I read in some of the reports (can't remember if official ESA, news, or twitter) that they were turned on for just 3 seconds (instead of the inteded ~50), plus the parachute was cut off earlier too. So, as this report from ESA says, it fell from at least a 1000 times higher than intended (the cut off altitude was 2m or so).

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#26

Post by dr_zoidberg »

nixos wrote: post #19
UseStrict wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well their actual mission was the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Since they were sending hardware to Mars orbit anyways, they decided to try and attempt a landing. The rover was not designed to last very long - 7 days battery. Their actual high quality lab on wheels will be going out in 2020.

Yes, the point wasn't the lander but the _landing_ . If the landing works, they can try an expensive rover in 2020. Now, they can fix what they think broke, but they're never sure until it (fails to) land.

Or if it lands they can say "see? we learned to land with the crashed Schiaparelli, so it was good sending it in the first place". But a succesful landing would've been better, now they may face a few objections arising from the failure.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#27

Post by LunaSea »

Once again, billions of euros are put into use for what is essentially scientific curiosity instead of trying to solve the very real problems Europe is facing. I love astronomy and space exploration but the amounts of money wasted into it rather than other problems with a high priority is staggering.

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#29

Post by dr_zoidberg »

protomyth wrote: post #24
beamatronic wrote: post #13

It is so bad ass that when we have a question about something that happened on another planet we can just point one of our other robots' cameras at the site!

I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.

Opportunity is not so far (it's actually inside a crater nearby I think), but it'd take months to get to place, and there may not be enough scientific value in doing so just to see the charred remains of Schiaparelli. But who knows, it's so over it's expected mission life that maybe someone goes "f* it, let's go take a look".

Re: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site

#30

Post by pavlov »

LunaSea wrote: post #27

Once again, billions of euros are put into use for what is essentially scientific curiosity instead of trying to solve the very real problems Europe is facing. I love astronomy and space exploration but the amounts of money wasted into it rather than other problems with a high priority is staggering.

The EU has a population of over 500 million. For a program like this (assuming it's all from public funds), each citizen paid on average less than a cup of coffee costs at Starbucks.

It's real money, but what pressing pan-European problem could you really solve with such a tiny budget?

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