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Wait continues for European Schiaparelli Mars lander
- walkingolof 10y agoBeagle 2 comes to mind ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2
- netinstructions 10y agoWith the (possibly incorrect) thread title as it currently stands, this is a relevant and interesting read. The interesting part was waiting 12 years for another orbiter to image the landing area to figure out what went wrong with Beagle 2. If ExoMars/Schiaparelli never sends a signal indicating what happened, would NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera been able to photograph Schiaparelli (the lander) and figure out what went wrong? The Beagle 2 is 2 meters across and Schiaparelli has a 2.4 m diameter.
- danielweber 10y agoHow many passes did it take for HiRISE to build up that picture of Beagle 2?
- qznc 10y agoInteresting. The Beagle 2 is 12 pixels on the original fotos. Using mad CSI skills (aka Super-Resolution Restoration) they enhanced it to 100 pixels. http://www.space.com/32691-europe-beagle-2-mars-lander-photos.html http://www.space.com/32691-europe-beagle-2-mars-lander-photo...
- jessriedel 10y agoMost up to date info is here: https://twitter.com/esaoperations https://twitter.com/esaoperations
- baq 10y ago>End of planned @ESA_EDM transmission - still no signal at #GMRT - this is not unexpected due to very faint signal at #GMRT #ExoMars https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788759668940210176 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788759668940210176
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- warrenmiller 10y ago"ESA Flight Operations Director Michel Denis has confirmed that they have lost contact with the probe. The team is now hoping to pick up a signal from the Mars Orbiter, but it's not looking hopeful" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/19/exomars-space-probe-schiaparelli-landing-mars-surface-live/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/19/exomars-space-...
- baq 10y agothat's the orbiter. the lander status is unknown; ESA is waiting for signal replay from mars express.
- kl4m 10y agoWow, the news coverage is really awful. They have not confirmed anything yet.
- danielweber 10y agoWhile ESA is nowhere as good as NASA at public outreach[1], does it really suck that we have to wait an extra day to find out what happened 100 million miles away? [1] NASA probably is overly concerned about public outreach, to the point of choosing missions that look cool or sound cool over those that actually work or do new science.
- kl4m 10y agoThe original title was: “No Signal from European Schiaparelli Mars Lander”. I was talking about trigger-happy, misleading coverage from the BBC and Telegraph, not ESA.
- the_duke 10y ago> MarsExpress has started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording. Even at light speed it will take 9m47s to reach Earth #ExoMars (seconds ago)
- hanoz 10y agoThough of course, knowledge of whether it has in fact started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording will also take 9m47s to reach Earth.
- MrZongle2 10y agoJust now: #MarsExpress signal acquired! The ESA Deep Space Antenna #Cebreros reports a clear signal from @ESA's veteran Mars mission. #ExoMars https://twitter.com/esaoperations https://twitter.com/esaoperations
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- cyberpunk 10y agoYeehaa!! Well done humanity! ESA Operations @esaoperations 40s 40 seconds ago #MarsExpress signal acquired! The ESA Deep Space Antenna #Cebreros reports a clear signal from @ESA's veteran Mars mission. #ExoMars
- david-given 10y agoMars Express recorded Schiaparelli's signal during descent. All this report is is that Mars Express has started downlinking the recording to Earth --- it's not a report that contact's been made with the lander.
- cyberpunk 10y agosad trombone
- PuffinBlue 10y agoI was under the impression the data sent to MarsExpress was a confirmatory landing signal. No? That data, re-transmitted from MarsExpress is now arriving: https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033
- Descon 10y agoSignal aquired! https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788768364235743232 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788768364235743232
- PuffinBlue 10y agoYes yes yes yes yes!!!! Get in!! EDIT: Hey, who downvotes happiness? Even if premature? Humbugs.
- the_duke 10y agoYay! The sad thing is: only 2-8 sols before the battery is dead.
- Someone 10y agoEarth sols or Mars sols? (It's named after the sun, but a property of a planetary orbit)
- bwhitty 10y agoI believe a sol is a Mars-specific term (at least in this context). But maybe reading The Martian has me thinking that.
- mikeash 10y agoWith a range as big as 2-8, it doesn't really matter. A Mars day is only 40 minutes longer.
- planteen 10y agoI think you are right based on Wikipedia: The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on Mars.[8] A mean Martian solar day, or "sol", is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds.[6] When a spacecraft lander begins operations on Mars, the passing Martian days (sols) are tracked using a simple numerical count. The two Viking missions, Mars Phoenix and the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity count the sol on which each lander touched down as "Sol 0"; Mars Pathfinder and the two Mars Exploration Rovers instead defined touchdown as "Sol 1".[9] Although lander missions have twice occurred in pairs, no effort was made to synchronize the sol counts of the two landers within each pair. Thus, for example, although Spirit and Opportunity were sent to operate simultaneously on Mars, each counted its landing date as "Sol 1", putting their calendars approximately 21 sols out of sync. Spirit and Opportunity differ in longitude by 179 degrees, so when it is daylight for one it is night for the other, and they carried out activities independently while both were operational. On Earth, astronomers often use Julian Dates – a simple sequential count of days – for timekeeping purposes. A proposed counterpart on Mars is the Mars Sol Date (MSD), which is a running count of sols since December 29, 1873 (coincidentally the birth date of astronomer Carl Otto Lampland). Another proposal suggests a start date (or epoch) in the year 1608 (invention of the telescope). Either choice is intended to ensure that all historically recorded events related to Mars occur after it. The Mars Sol Date is defined mathematically as MSD = (Julian Date using International Atomic Time - 2451549.5 + k)/1.02749125 + 44796.0, where k is a small correction of approximately 0.00014 d (or 12 s) due to uncertainty in the exact geographical position of the prime meridian at Airy-0 crater. The word "yestersol" was coined by the NASA Mars operations team early during the MER mission to refer to the previous sol (the Mars version of "yesterday"), and came into fairly wide use within that organization during the Mars Exploration Rover Mission of 2003.[10] It was even picked up and used by the press.[citation needed] Other neologisms include "tosol" (for "today" on Mars), as well as one of three Mars versions of "tomorrow": "nextersol", "morrowsol", or "solmorrow".[11] NASA planners coined the term "soliday" at least as far back as 2012 to refer to days off due to time phasing or the syncing of planetary schedules.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars#Sols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars#Sols
- ts330 10y agototally misleading title... there was no signal at the time because they were still waiting for it.
- PuffinBlue 10y agoYes, perhaps the title here could be altered to remove the "No".
- jessriedel 10y agoI believe the lander was expected to send a confirmation signal directly to Earth after landing, which it did not do.
- sctb 10y agoWe've updated the submission title from “No Signal from European Schiaparelli Mars Lander”. If the article title changes, we can update it again.
- DavidWanjiru 10y agoI saw this headline and went "SHIT!" No, I'm not emotionally invested, in fact I only learnt about it a few hours ago here on HN. Good to hear they have signal.
- david-given 10y agoMy understanding is that there are three spacecraft involved: Schiaparelli, the lander; really just a technology demonstrator. The signal was lost at about landing. It was always intended to go into low power mode after landing to wake up later, so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth, but it may also have crashed. The ExoMars orbiter, the Trace Gas Orbiter, which carried Schiaparelli to Mars; it's just braked into orbit but has gone behind Mars and is uncontactable, but at last report everything was fine. It has (hopefully) recorded Schiaparelli's telemetry for downlinking to Earth later. Mars Express, an existing probe in orbit around Mars; it has also been recording Schiaparelli's telemetry; it can't decode the packets, but it can be used for doppler analysis. Right now Mars Express is downloading its data. They say it'll take about 10 minutes. I don't know whether that data will be enough to say whether Schiaparelli landed safely or not. I do know that it'll be a while until all the data from both orbiters is downloaded and analysed, and by then Schiaparelli may have woken up and called home (I don't have the schedule to hand), so it's not a writeoff yet. Edit for clarification: Turns out that TGO was actually doing its engine burn while out of contact from Earth (very small engine burning for a very long time), so when it comes out from behind Mars we'll know whether it made it into orbit or not. I should have actually guessed that from playing KSP.
- indexerror 10y ago> so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth You make it sound like the signal was lost in between somewhere :)
- tombone12 10y agoWell yeah, scattered out of the antenna line of sight by the martian atmosphere.
- godelski 10y agoOne might say that it is lost in space.
- david-given 10y agoThe Space Kraken is surprisingly good at absorbing radio waves. ...but seriously, it's a small battery powered vehicle with a tiny antenna, and it's trying to be heard from between 50 to 100 million kilometres away, and even in the best case it's just been tumble dried, blowtorched, hammered with explosive charges, and then dropped a couple of metres. I wouldn't be surprised if it lost some signal strength. Mars Express was supposed to record the doppler shift of the carrier wave on descent, so should be able to pick up any landing signal. We'll see when they release the results.
- joeyspn 10y agoLive video stream from ESA HQ: http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival
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- kevinbowman 10y agohttps://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448 "#MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC #ExoMars" ...then... https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064 "ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars #ExoMars" Also a photo of some very happy space people. Edit: another tweet saying they'll need around 2 hours of data to confirm that they've reached orbit, confirmation at 20:30 CEST (https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788781863687036928 https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788781863687036928). Space is somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster.
- kevinbowman 10y agoNote that the lander is Schiaparelli, TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter) is just the "mothership" which it uplinks to; TGO achieving orbit, though, is still a special achievement.
- david-given 10y agoTGO is the actual mission. The lander's just a technology demo --- important for the next ExoMars mission rover, but it was only going to last a few days anyway. Schiaparelli being lost is a 'well, go figure' moment; TGO being lost is an utter disaster. Unfortunately landers are sexy, while science-rich orbiting probes aren't, so it's Schiaparelli that's getting all the press.
- baq 10y agoi think it's more of a case of 'good news is no news' - failures are naturally more interesting than just saying that everything went according to the plan and we only have a few pics to show for it.
- estel 10y agoWhilst that's true, the popular coverage before the landing (judged entirely from the BBC News home page) focused exclusively on the lander attempt rather than the orbiter.
- andreapaiola 10y ago18:53 CEST: The ExoMars/TGO spacecraft completed its critical orbit-insertion manoeuvre at Mars today and its signals were received by ground stations at 18:34 CEST, just as expected. The timely re-acquisition indicates the engine burn went as planned, and mission controllers are waiting for a detailed assessment from the flight dynamics specialists at ESOC to confirm it. Teams monitoring the Schiaparelli lander continue waiting for indication of the lander’s progress. Engineers are waiting for the next signal receipt slot, which will be provided by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will overfly the Schiaparelli landing site between about 18:49 and 19:03 CEST, and downlink any received signals at around 20:00 CEST.
- yellowapple 10y agoThe map makes it look like it was supposed to land right on top of Opportunity. Seeing as how Opportunity is (last I checked) still operational, would it be possible to send it out to investigate what might've happened if Schiaparelli did indeed fail?
- Faaak 10y agoWanted to ask the same question. Very interested in the answer !
- danielweber 10y agoThat rover moves about a mile a day. It would need to abandon its current mission for weeks or months to get close enough to see.
- trothamel 10y agoProbably not. While Schiaparelli is close enough Oppy could plausibly reach it after quite a bit of driving, it would be criminal for Opportunity to go investigate an engineering problem when it was sent to mars to do science.
- Steltek 10y agoOTOH, wouldn't it have been awesome if Opportunity had recorded the lander on descent? I'm not sure how much azimuth swivel the cameras have but maybe they could have parked it uphill pointing in the right direction...
- jcoffland 10y agoThis will be devastating to the ESA's funding which is why they are spinning it so hard. This really sucks.
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- trothamel 10y agoUnfortunately, this reminds me a bit of the wait for the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed on mars in 1999. If the initial communication fails, we have to start hoping for automatic recovery from progressively more and more unlikely failures. For example, if the initial communication at the end of the landing fails, you hope that it's just the direct-to-Earth antenna. But since it doesn't look like Mars Express could confirm the landing, we have to hope that something prevented it from contacting that - a bad angle or something. Well, perhaps another orbiter will pick it up, or a watchdog timer will time out and fix the problem (for example, by switching to another radio, if they have one). There's no point in the flight controllers giving up hope, for the few days the batteries would last. But at the same time, the list of things that could cause the failure without destroying the lander totally grows smaller. (That being said, we now have orbiters that should be able to image the landing site, which could help diagnose the problem more quickly.)
- bd 10y agoSchiaparelli lander status update from ESA TV live stream (20:35 CEST): - already two sources confirmed losing signal during landing sequence (GMRT radio telescope in India [1] + Mars Express orbiter [2]) - still more data coming around midnight CEST (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [3]) - processing new data will take some time (ESA team will work on it through the night) - press conference with hopefully more news about lander's fate tomorrow at 10:00 CEST ------ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Metrewave_Radio_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Metrewave_Radio_Telescop... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter
- danielweber 10y agoWith Beagle 2 (ESA's other attempt to land on Mars), we also lost the signal, but it turned out that it made a safe landing. But solar panels failed to unfold and that blocked transmission.
- netinstructions 10y agoWhile you're all waiting for a signal from the lander you may be interested in the aerothermodynamics testing of the the module at a ballistic range - http://i.imgur.com/Xs6NdMC.gifv http://i.imgur.com/Xs6NdMC.gifv Some more reading can be found at ESA's website http://exploration.esa.int/mars/49139-aerothermodynamic-tests/ http://exploration.esa.int/mars/49139-aerothermodynamic-test... EDL (Entry Descent and Landing) on Mars is such a tricky thing because it has a thin enough atmosphere parachutes don't work well, but enough atmosphere that you have to take it into account when controlling/designing the landing module (hence Schiaparelli's complex aerothermodynamics testing). This is also why NASA's Curiosity rover had such a complex "sky crane" system and why NASA is willing to provide SpaceX communications support in exchange for the EDL data of SpaceX's landing module (the Red Dragon mission).
- stouset 10y agoIs that just GIF artifacts, or can you actually see a shock front as the lander mockup passes in front of objects (particularly, the striped markers)? That's incredible!
- mickronome 10y agoThats a shockwave for sure, look at the timestamps, that thing is going very fast.
- mickronome 10y agoWanted to add that while it is hard to judge the speed, if it would happen to be subsonic then I guess it technically is a pressure front and not a shock front as it is when supersonic, if I've understood the distinction correctly.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoI watched the animation and I saw that the lander would land with a hard thud on the surface, with a system to collapse underneath and cushion it's fall. Why didn't they use the sky-crane method that NASA and JPL came up with?
- rbanffy 10y agoIf they had the mass budget to fit a crane they'd probably pack bigger batteries.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoI'm not sure I understand. The Mars Rover is powered by a nuclear reactor.
- kl4m 10y agoThe Schiaparelli lander is an experiment to test this specific landing method. The landing is the experiment. It's battery-powered and will go dark in a few days.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoMuch clearer than you!
- pitiburi 10y ago"#FlightDynamics reported to the #FlightDirector that "We are captured in Mars orbit...all within expected tolerances" #ExoMars" .....TGO is in Mars Orbit!!!!
- mirekrusin 10y agoMaybe windows update kicked in?
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- andreapaiola 10y agoAll good for the orbiters! No news for the lander. See you tomorrow morning.
- wlesieutre 10y agoSummary for the day posted on ESA's website. The highlights: > The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) of ESA’s ExoMars 2016 has successfully performed the long 139-minute burn required to be captured by Mars and entered an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet, while contact has not yet been confirmed with the mission’s test lander from the surface. > Media briefing tomorrow at 10:00 CEST for more information. The briefing will be streamed online. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/ExoMars_TGO_reaches_Mars_orbit_while_EDM_situation_under_assessment http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/ExoM...
- flashman 10y agoBeagle 2: solar panels didn't deploy. Philae: didn't anchor to surface, bounced into a crevice. Schiaparelli: missing in action. If this is another loss, ESA is continuing its bad run with landers.
- maxxxxx 10y agoYeah. It's pretty disappointing. I really would like to see ESA leave the shadow of NASA.
- russdill 10y agoBriefing in approx 30 minutes: http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival A press conference is scheduled for 20 October at 08:00 GMT / 10:00 CEST, when a mission status update is expected, along with the first images from the Schiaparelli descent camera. This will also be streamed live via the player above.
- andreapaiola 10y agoevents diverging from what was expected after the ejection of the back heat shield and parachute. This ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete. The thrusters were confirmed to have been briefly activated although it seems likely that they switched off sooner than expected, at an altitude that is still to be determined. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Schiaparelli_descent_data_decoding_underway http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Schi...