The possible cause of the Skiaparelli module is named

The Skiaparelli module crashed on Mars due to problems in the software. These are the preliminary conclusions of the European Space Agency, about which the director of the Central Department Store Rolf Densing spoke on ARD on the air.

The processing of the resulting telemetry showed that the radar, which measured the height at the time of landing, incorrectly transmitted data from the navigation program. Because of this, the team cut off the parachute was given ahead of time.

The device was on considerable altitude, but the program mistakenly decided that it had already sat down. As a result, the brake engines worked for only three seconds, although according to the plan, they should have gently put the module on the surface of Mars for almost a minute.

As a result, Schiaparelli fell from a height of 2-4 kilometers at a speed of about 300 kilometers per hour and crashed. Densing noted that these conclusions are not yet final. The causes of the accident will be established within a few weeks.

The unsuccessful landing of Schiaparelli occurred on October 19 as part of the exomars-2016 mission. On the same day, the TRACE GAS Orbiter module, with which Schiaparelli was launched from the ground, successfully entered the orbit of Mars. Eka recognized the mission partially successful.

Exomars is a joint program of ECA and Roscosmos. The mission of 2016 was supposed to collect the necessary data and work out technologies for a full -fledged landing platform with a parse in 2020.