Oh dear...

[daivernon]

Well, that didn't quite go as planned. I'm surprised neither chute opened though - I would have thought that even if the drogue failed to deploy that the main chute would have at least made an attempt to deploy, even if it couldn't sustain the shock or the tumbling. But there was no sign of either

Comments

[mylkqueen]

I've just read it. I hope they can collect enough samples and salvage something.

That does suck.

[daivernon]

I'm not sure if they'll be able to. The main reason for the helicopter catch was to stop the sample collectors breaking up - there's a whole bunch of plates of fairly exotic and sometimes fragile materials in there. It's now crunched into the ground at 100mph or so, so there's going to be breakage.

Worse case is if the sample containers opened to the atmosphere in the impact. That would contaminate the samples.