[votingprawn]

Whilst incredibly disappointing for ESA, this is unfortunately not their first IMU-failure rodeo.

An Ariane 5 launch back in 1996 [0] suffered a catstrophic failure after the inertial reference units gave bad data, and the flight control computer accepted it as gospel.

It is sad that they might have lost another platform due to a lack of appropriate range / saturation checking, especially as there was a radar altimeter onboard telling them they weren't underground.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(spacecraft)#Launch_fa...

[creshal]

Ariane is built by Airbus, Schiaparelli was built by Thales Alenia, two completely independent companies. Not sure why there's supposed to be a correlation, other than both were contracted by ESA.

[votingprawn]

> both were contracted by ESA.

Yes I'm aware of how ESA works and who built what. But I would have hoped the common connection would have greater instilled the need for checking for these sorts of errors, if the Schiaparelli incident is as blutack theorised.

[projektinjohto]

It says on Thales webpage that their IMU is already onboard on Ariane 5. I don't know what IMU was on Schiaparelli.

https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/aerospace/topaxyz-i...

[acqq]

Nobody claimed the same company did it, just that there are similarities in the way the software errors caused the destruction.