Glitch in navigation sensor caused Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander to jettison

Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander crashed last month after a sensor failure caused it to cast away its parachute and turn off braking thrusters more than two miles (3.7 km) above the surface of the planet, as if it had already landed, a new report has revealed. The error stemmed from a momentary glitch in a device that measured how fast the spacecraft was spinning, the report by the European Space Agency said. The spacecraft activated its ground systems, even though it was still about 2.3 miles off the surface, the ESA said. The new image of Schiaparelli and its hardware components was taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, on 1 November. A number of the bright white spots around the dark region interpreted as the impact site are now confirmed as real objects – they are not likely to be imaging'noise' – and therefore are most likely fragments of Schiaparelli.