Bad altitude reading leaves ESA with a destroyed lander on Mars

European Space Agency officials reported Wednesday that one-second of misinterpreted data lead to the crash of the Schiaparelli lander on the surface of Mars. The lander's Internal Measurement Unit, or IMU, gave the spacecraft's navigation computer the wrong data making it think that it had already landed onto the surface when it was about 12,000ft (3,700m) above the surface. The nine thrusters were supposed to fire for about 30 seconds to help slow the descent of the lander to land but hit the ground at nearly 200mph(300km/h) causing the craft too, which they believe, explode since the fuel tanks were full. This landing would've been ESA's first successful landing on Mars to pave the way for the ExoMars mission to launch in July 2020. Officials believe that they will learn enough information from the crash to keep the 2020 mission on track to a successful landing.