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What do we think went wrong? I expect maths to be right but there was a comment somewhere about the regolith with fine particles whose specific composition could have caused unexpected dust clouds as the lander sped to the ground ... how was this tech different from the other 3 successes?

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Those dust clouds, depending on particle size/composition, could start reflecting radar. Lander then gets confused about its altitude and crashes. This sort of thing makes some areas, the dusty flat ones, potentially more dangerous than others. But they are also flatter and so you don't worry about landing on a rock and tipping over. It's a judgement call.

That would always be a problem though, right? So for unmanned moon landings, do we instead need those inflated bouncy balls? Or did the previous successes just got it right?

My guess is the attempt at slowing caused it to pitch wildly.

So the algo didn’t account for that or the hardware wasn’t able to compensate?

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