I’ve had similar thoughts on this since the end of mission.
We knew early on in the mission that the springs on the legs had been reduced in weight and they were likely to be a failure point one day given enough flights. I assume that’s why they seemed to favour soft landing on isolated ripples during the mission. But those were isolated ripples and caused no issues that we are aware of for the navigation algorithms. One point that was not discussed in the press release, but may come out it the end of mission report was the changes to the team size with team members being released onto other projects. I assume also some team downsizing was accelerated by budget issues caused by the success of the mission and the numbers of flights going way beyond those thought possible. Those team changes may have led to pressures to plan easy routes and accepting the risks by planning flights over those near featureless terrains. IIRC there were issues relating to localisation for the last couple of landings. In hindsight it’s easy for us to say now, maybe after those localisation issues, then rather than plan a pop up flight to reset localisation, they should have flown up and away from the ripple field and pointed it in the general direction towards terrain with sufficient features for tracking and then permit it to decide where it was safe to land. I’m sure there will be more in the formal end-of-mission document. I hope it makes engineering and operational recommendations. I’ll be watching for the release of the full report, and will share it here ASAP.
I’ve had similar thoughts on this since the end of mission.
We knew early on in the mission that the springs on the legs had been reduced in weight and they were likely to be a failure point one day given enough flights. I assume that’s why they seemed to favour soft landing on isolated ripples during the mission. But those were isolated ripples and caused no issues that we are aware of for the navigation algorithms. One point that was not discussed in the press release, but may come out it the end of mission report was the changes to the team size with team members being released onto other projects. I assume also some team downsizing was accelerated by budget issues caused by the success of the mission and the numbers of flights going way beyond those thought possible. Those team changes may have led to pressures to plan easy routes and accepting the risks by planning flights over those near featureless terrains. IIRC there were issues relating to localisation for the last couple of landings. In hindsight it’s easy for us to say now, maybe after those localisation issues, then rather than plan a pop up flight to reset localisation, they should have flown up and away from the ripple field and pointed it in the general direction towards terrain with sufficient features for tracking and then permit it to decide where it was safe to land. I’m sure there will be more in the formal end-of-mission document. I hope it makes engineering and operational recommendations. I’ll be watching for the release of the full report, and will share it here ASAP.