Although, the article [0] does not say that literally, it sounds
like an integer overflow:
After trawling through mountains of data, the European Space
Agency said Wednesday that while much of the mission went
according to plan, a computer that measured the rotation of the
lander hit a maximum reading, knocking other calculations off
track.
That led the navigation system to think the lander was much
lower than it was, causing its parachute and braking thrusters
to be deployed prematurely.
"The erroneous information generated an estimated altitude that
was negative—that is, below ground level," the ESA said in a
statement.
That is why we need CheckedInt, folks. Reminder End. ;)
[0]
http://phys.org/news/2016-11-glitch-blamed-european-mars-lander.html
