European Marslander may have crashed due to error in measuring instrument

The ExoMars Schiaparelli, a Mars lander of the European Space Agency, probably crashed last month due to an incorrect measurement in the imu, the inertial measurement unit. That is what the ESA suspects. It appears to be a programming error.

Because the imu, which was supposed to measure the rotation of the Mars lander, was at its highest possible value longer than expected, the software estimated that the Schiaparelli was already underground, when in fact it was 3.7 km above the ground, writes. ESA. As a result, the Marslander pretended to have landed and crashed onto the surface of the red planet moments later.

ESA emphasizes that this is not a definitive conclusion of the investigation into the crash. That will only follow at the beginning of 2017. It is therefore still unknown why the Schiaparelli accepted the estimate of the imu as truth, while, for example, the functioning altimeter showed a completely different value.

The space agency says it learned a lot from the ExoMars mission, which it had planned to investigate the surface of the neighboring planet. There will be a second ExoMars mission in 2020.