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Don't most landers have a mechanical probe extending down from the landing gear to indicate contact with ground? I wonder if this lander was so equipped? Unle
by cyberferret 10y ago
Don't most landers have a mechanical probe extending down from the landing gear to indicate contact with ground? I wonder if this lander was so equipped?
Unless they used a ground proximity radar which sent back false pings due to overheating caused by the too early discarded heat shield?
I'll wait for the final crash analysis and report, but I trust that the lessons learned here will significantly improve the chances of future missions, if at least by adding some more redundancies into the mix.
- rootbear 10y agoSee my post above about a similar NASA incident. The ground contact in that case was indicated by sensors on the landing gear. They appear to have recorded a false positive when the gear were deployed. Different spacecraft use different methods, I don't know what technology Schiaparelli used.