Computer glitch blamed for European Mars lander crash

PARIS – A tiny lander that crashed on Mars last month flew into the Red Planet at 540 kilometers (335 miles) per hour instead of gently gliding to a stop, after a computer misjudged its altitude, scientists said. Schiaparelli was on a test-run for a future rover meant to seek out evidence of life, past or present, but it fell silent seconds before its scheduled touchdown on October 19. 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.