At this impact velocity, the lander could not have survived. Unlike the case with MPL, there was no one failure mode that was identified as being most probable. However, there were four failure modes that were determined to be plausible and they are listed below. Refer to Section 8 for a more detailed treatment of the DS2 failure modes. Both probes bounce on impact due to unanticipated surface effects.
Probes fail due to ionization breakdown in Mars atmosphere.
Probe lands on its side, interfering with antenna performance. The DS2 mission was designed to validate 10 advanced, high risk, high-payoff technologies. As originally approved, the development plan included a system-level qualification test that was ultimately deleted. This represented an acknowledged risk to the program that was assessed and approved by JPL and NASA management on the basis of cost and schedule considerations and best use of available resources. Both the MPL and DS2 projects made noteworthy efforts to reduce the cost of implementing flight projects in response to severe and unprecedented technical and fiscal constraints.