ESA's Schiaparelli Mars probe crashed because of integer overflow

[Timon Gehr via Digitalmars-d]

On 25.11.2016 08:14, Patrick Schluter wrote:
> On Thursday, 24 November 2016 at 20:22:00 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> ...
>>
>> 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 don't think we have enough information to judge, but remember that 
writing correct software is hard. This is no less true if it should 
automatically land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars using real time 
data from possibly malfunctioning sensors. :)