3 ms·
NASA's Mars Polar Impacter, er, Lander, also shut off it's descent engine too early, believing it was on the ground, and slammed into Mars. This stuff is hard.
by rootbear 10y ago
NASA's Mars Polar Impacter, er, Lander, also shut off it's descent engine too early, believing it was on the ground, and slammed into Mars. This stuff is hard. The Wikipedia entry gives the details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander#Landing_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander#Landing_atte...
- ge96 10y agoThey don't have altimeter's/range finders? I wonder what causes the confusion.
- generj 10y agoThey do have radar altimeters, but radar altimeters face occasional issues. So they usually also bake in various failsafe measures. Sadly the failsafe measures tend to be the thing which dooms spacecraft, usually in odd ways unpredictable until an actual spacecraft is hurtling towards the ground.
- ge96 10y agoThat is too bad. I wonder if a laser in the front would be useless as the heat build up as it enters the atmosphere would make the "bounce-back" hard to receive.