
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site - okket
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter_views_Schiaparelli_landing_site
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beamatronic
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!

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

~~~
beamatronic
We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D
has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more?
We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the
rovers capabilities.

~~~
mturmon
That's pretty much what we have done:
[http://imgur.com/3Hg9O](http://imgur.com/3Hg9O) (Pathfinder,
Spirit/Opportunity, Curiosity). Mars2020 isn't designed yet, but it will be
based on Curiosity.

~~~
photogrammetry
Mars 2020 is designed yet, you can view its design and experiments here:
[http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/](http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/)

Sure, it may not be fully officially built, but it has been designed almost to
completion.

~~~
mastazi
Since the vehicle design is based on Opportunity, I would say the biggest news
is the array of sensor/instruments on board:
[http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/](http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/)

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BurningFrog
The main mission of this expedition is the Trace Gas Orbiter:
[http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46475-trace-gas-
orbiter/](http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46475-trace-gas-orbiter/)

 _" the Trace Gas Orbiter will be deployed to detect a wide range of
atmospheric trace gases (such as methane, water vapour, nitrogen oxides,
acetylene), with an improved accuracy of three orders of magnitude compared to
previous measurements."_

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tangue
In Rob Manning's book [0] : He explained how hard it is to land on Mars. It's
nicely sum up in those two sentences :

 _“There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on
the moon, using propulsive technology completely,” said Manning, “and there’s
too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth. So, it’s in this ugly, grey
zone.”_ [1]

The recent success of Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity must not shadow the
fact that most Mars missions have failed.

[0] "Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer

[1] [http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-
approach-...](http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-
getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/)

~~~
sathackr
I don't think the atmosphere is the problem with landing heavy landers like we
do on the moon. For some reason I think gravity is the main problem. The only
effect I can think of the atmosphere would have is on engine efficiency, and
it's so thin I doubt it's much of a consideration at all.

~~~
peter303
You are very wrong. Read the literature.

~~~
sathackr
Yea I started thinking about it after I posted. Ya know, the heat and stuff.

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Aqua_Geek
> 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.

~~~
raverbashing
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

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shuntress
That is when it switched from thrusters to lithobraking.

~~~
Sharlin
Lithobraking has actually been a feature in at least one Mars mission: the
pair of impactor probes that piggybacked on NASA's unlucky Mars Polar Lander
mission of 1999 [1]. The MPL itself, as is quite well known, ended up doing an
_unplanned_ lithobraking maneuver after its retrorockets shut down too soon
(!) due to insufficient integration testing. The impactors were never heard of
either; the exact failure mode remains unclear.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2)

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mturmon
Questions have come up about the landing strategy of the Schiaparelli lander.
It uses a Doppler radar to get position and velocity, time deployment of
parachute, and calibrate thrust for retro-rockets. The best references I was
able to find are these:

[http://exploration.esa.int/mars/47852-entry-descent-and-
land...](http://exploration.esa.int/mars/47852-entry-descent-and-landing-
demonstrator-module/)

[http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/Bayle_ExoMars_EDM_Overview-...](http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/Bayle_ExoMars_EDM_Overview-
Paper.pdf) (solid, is undated, seems old and nonspecific in some cases)

[https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/7B.1_Lorenzoni_ExoMars%202...](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/7B.1_Lorenzoni_ExoMars%202016%20Entry%20Descent%20and%20Landing%20Demonstrator%20Module%20EDL%20overview.pdf)
(from 2013, more detail)

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yummybear
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.

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jcoffland
The chances of landing are 100%.

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njharman
I believe rocket scientists make a distinction between landing and impacting.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Different intensities of lithobraking.

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altechcode
That 600MB of telemetry should provide extremely valuable in making that rover
they are planning to land less likely to fail.

Sadly you really don't get that many attempts...

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ramgorur
Should we say that the space programs in the 60s and the 70s were more
successful? specially, if we consider the communication and the control
technologies available at that time. For example, vikings had Honeywell 24 bit
cpu with 18K memory. What about those Argon computers used in the soviet
venera programs?

Or may be, a very fast/accurate computation is not that necessary?

~~~
Sanddancer
The landing techniques that are being used are bringing much larger payloads
to the Martian surface than were brought in previous landings. Curiosity, for
example, is about twice the weight of the Viking landers. In general, we're
much more successful at landing and receiving data from mars-bound craft than
we were back there; the soviets sent several probes to mars and got minimal
data back from them before they failed.

Fast/accurate computing is needed for surface work on Mars because it means
that the devices don't have to wait around for commands all the time. Giving
more processor power and ability means that more flexible programs can be
written to sift through the data and just send back the most interesting
parts. Fast and accurate are very much needed for the kinds of lab experiments
we're doing on mars.

~~~
peter303
Vikings, MERs and Curoisty/2020 each used totoally different landing
technologies. Amazing they all worked.

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Too
Stupid question maybe, but would it not make sense to launch multiple landers
with one rocket? The hardware cost of a rover must be peanuts compared to the
engineering cost, the launch cost and the time to travel? How big is the
lander compared to the launch rocket?

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JoachimS
I read the headline as "shrapnel landing site"

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animex
Splat. Not sure if that is a landing site or a crash site.

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pmoriarty
Now imagine there being 100 people onboard that spacecraft, as Elon Musk plans
for.

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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.

~~~
pavlov
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?

~~~
LunaSea
Look at the economical situation of countries like Greece and Spain. That
would be one starting point.

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maxander
According to the easily-found stats on Wikipedia [1,2], the MRO cost $720
million, whereas the Greek bailout given in 2010 (alone) was €110 ($119)
_billion_. Notice the "m" in the first and the "b" in the second- your
"starting point" is _orders of magnitude_ beyond the resources we're talking
about here.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-
debt_crisis#2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-
debt_crisis#2010_revelations_and_IMF_bailout)

~~~
Symbiote
Indeed, the entire ESA budget for this year is €5.2 billion, of which a third
is Earth observation satellites.

[http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/01/ESA_budget_2...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/01/ESA_budget_2016_by_domain)

~~~
elkos
And as a Greek I see that day by day we are taking advantage more and more the
data available from EO satellites. You need lots of data to restart the
economy.

