ESA's Schiaparelli Mars probe crashed because of integer overflow

[Patrick Schluter via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 24 November 2016 at 20:22:00 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 24.11.2016 20:49, qznc wrote:
>> Although, the article [0] does not say that literally, it 
>> sounds like an
>> integer overflow:
>>
>>> After trawling through mountains of data, the European Space 
>>> Agency
>>> said Wednesday that while much of the mission went according 
>>> to plan,
>>> a computer that measured the rotation of the lander hit a 
>>> maximum
>>> reading, knocking other calculations off track.
>>
>>> That led the navigation system to think the lander was much 
>>> lower than
>>> it was, causing its parachute and braking thrusters to be 
>>> deployed
>>> prematurely.
>>
>>> "The erroneous information generated an estimated altitude 
>>> that was
>>> negative—that is, below ground level," the ESA said in a 
>>> statement.
>>
>> That is why we need CheckedInt, folks. Reminder End. ;)
>>
>>
>> [0] 
>> http://phys.org/news/2016-11-glitch-blamed-european-mars-lander.html
>
> I don't think overflow is what happened. Rather, the 
> statistical model they used to filter the sensor data didn't 
> match reality. It put too much trust into a malfunctioning 
> sensor -- I assume the sensor readings were extremely 
> implausible.

Hey, sounds suspicously similar to Ariane 5 explosion. Does ESA 
not learn from its errors or am I only reading too much in it 
(probably)?