ESA's Schiaparelli Mars probe crashed because of integer overflow

[Alix Pexton via Digitalmars-d]

On 25/11/2016 07:14, Patrick Schluter wrote:
> 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)?

I thought Ariane was caused by errorcodes from one module being sent on 
the same bus as telemetry and interpreted as instructions by another module?

A...