Wait continues for European Schiaparelli Mars lander | Hacker News Reader

Wait continues for European Schiaparelli Mars lander

bbc.co.uk

212 pointswarrenmiller91 comments

My 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.

> 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 :)

Well yeah, scattered out of the antenna line of sight by the martian atmosphere.

One might say that it is lost in space.

The 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.

It's probably under the couch.

> so when it comes out from behind Mars we'll know whether it made it into orbit or not.

The orbiter successfully inserted into orbit, but the lander has not responded and things look grim. In particular, when they replayed lander's signal as heard by the MarsExpress satellite, it cut out as exactly the same time as was heard directly from Earth. That makes it more likely the lander stopped transmitting in the middle of its descent, rather than having its signal blocked on the way to Earth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/science/esa-mars-lander.ht...

Link contains autoplaying sound

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

"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). Space is somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster.

Note 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.

TGO 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.

i 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.

Whilst 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.

BBC will focus particularly on the lander because it's the direct followup to the British Beagle 2.

While 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

Some more reading can be found at ESA's website 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).

Is 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!

Thats a shockwave for sure, look at the timestamps, that thing is going very fast.

Wanted 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.

Signal aquired! https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788768364235743232

Yes yes yes yes yes!!!! Get in!!

EDIT: Hey, who downvotes happiness? Even if premature? Humbugs.

Yay!

The sad thing is: only 2-8 sols before the battery is dead.

Earth sols or Mars sols? (It's named after the sun, but a property of a planetary orbit)

I believe a sol is a Mars-specific term (at least in this context).

But maybe reading The Martian has me thinking that.

With a range as big as 2-8, it doesn't really matter. A Mars day is only 40 minutes longer.

I 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

Sol means a local solar day on a given planet - not necessarily Mars.

Sol, as a messure of a day is only used for Mars

Mars Sol is just 40 minutes longer than earth day, not a huge difference.

That's nice, but that's not the lander. That's the downlink of landing data.

It's the EDM (lander) data, relayed through Mars Express.

It's starting to come (EDM is Schiaparelli lander, TGO is orbiter):

--------------------

Latest status for lander: still unknown (next checkpoint after 20:00 CEST)

Latest status for orbiter: seems good

--------------------

1) The @ESA_EDM landing recording from #MarsExpress has started arriving on Earth, #ESOC teams report seeing packets flowing #ExoMars

2) It will take just over 10 minutes for #MarsExpress to transmit the @ESA_EDM recording #ExoMars

3) Interpretation of the @ESA_EDM recording is quite complex - could take more than 30 minutes

4) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is signal only, no telemetry. We can already tell a lot from that though.

5) #MarsExpress team now processing @ESA_EDM landing recording to extract the trace of the lander's signal as it descended to Mars.

6) #MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC

7) ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars

8) Initial reports from @ESA_TGO telemetry are that it performed exactly as expected during the #BigBurn

9) @ESA_TGO team are now analysing the health of the orbiter, looking good so far

10) 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.

11) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is inconclusive - not clear yet what the status of the lander is

--------------------

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770921788178432

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771548517785600

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771906455470080

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788775324389634048

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788782643697577985

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788783926173130752

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Live...

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788790526422188032

Right, but we already know that the lander emitted some signals part way through the descent (directly transmitted to Earth 1 hours ago):

> #GMRT signal trace has jumped again, which should be the signature of @ESA_EDM parachute deployment #ExoMars

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755782665928704

> Further jumps in the signals from #GMRT - should show heatshield separation and powered descent #ExoMars

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755964786839552

So this doesn't tell us anything new. What's still to be seen is whether it survives the landing on the surface.

If the lander survived, it was expected to transmit. So far it seems that nothing like the expected transmission has been received.

And the data is of the expected size indicating that the lander likely transmitted successfully. We just await it's re-transmission and arrival here on Earth to confirm.

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033

I think that just means they can now download the recording of the lander's signal from Mars Express (which is being used as a signal relay), not that they yet know if the recording indicates a successful landing.

Unfortunately, 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.)

Most up to date info is here:

https://twitter.com/esaoperations

Summary 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/ExoM...

The 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?

Wanted to ask the same question. Very interested in the answer !

That 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.

Probably 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.

OTOH, 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...

AFAIK, Oppy was in fact watching. Given its abilities it's however unlikely it was able to see something substantial.

Info on Opportunity watching for Schiaparelli EDM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763583

That sort of engineering problem would also be a great opportunity to do some really cool science, would it not?

Seeing as how Opportunity is [..] still operational

It is? That's astonishing. I guess I lost track after the main press shifted to Curiosity.

18:53 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.

Briefing in approx 30 minutes:

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.

TGO status is confirmed and is ready for science.

Parachute deploy of lander confirmed, heat shield function confirmed. Parachute flight worked, but parachute release did not match expectations. Things went downhill from there.

Schiaparelli 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_Telescop...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

With 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.

>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

Beagle 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.

Yeah. It's pretty disappointing. I really would like to see ESA leave the shadow of NASA.

Yeehaa!! 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

Mars 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.

sad trombone

I 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

> MarsExpress has started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording. Even at light speed it will take 9m47s to reach Earth #ExoMars (seconds ago)

Though of course, knowledge of whether it has in fact started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording will also take 9m47s to reach Earth.

This will be devastating to the ESA's funding which is why they are spinning it so hard. This really sucks.

All good for the orbiters!

No news for the lander.

See you tomorrow morning.

I 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?

If they had the mass budget to fit a crane they'd probably pack bigger batteries.

I'm not sure I understand. The Mars Rover is powered by a nuclear reactor.

The 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.

Much clearer than you!

events 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/Schi...

"#FlightDynamics reported to the #FlightDirector that "We are captured in Mars orbit...all within expected tolerances" #ExoMars" .....TGO is in Mars Orbit!!!!

Live video stream from ESA HQ:

http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival

Beagle 2 comes to mind ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2

With 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.

How many passes did it take for HiRISE to build up that picture of Beagle 2?

Interesting. 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-photo...

"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-...

that's the orbiter. the lander status is unknown; ESA is waiting for signal replay from mars express.

Wow, the news coverage is really awful. They have not confirmed anything yet.

While 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.

The 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.

I 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.

Maybe windows update kicked in?

totally misleading title... there was no signal at the time because they were still waiting for it.

Yes, perhaps the title here could be altered to remove the "No".

I believe the lander was expected to send a confirmation signal directly to Earth after landing, which it did not do.

We've updated the submission title from “No Signal from European Schiaparelli Mars Lander”. If the article title changes, we can update it again.

Just 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

/thread

not yet, depends on the contents of the signal

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