The European Space Agency on 23 Nov 2016 said its Schiaparelli lander's crash landing on Mars on 19 Oct 2016 followed an unexplained saturation of its inertial measurement unit, which delivered bad data to the lander's computer and forced a premature release of its parachute. *A one-second glitch and a 3,700-meter freefall* In its statement, ESA said the saturation reading from Schiaparelli's inertial measurement unit lasted only a second, but was enough to play havoc with the navigation system. ``[T]he erroneous information generated an estimated altitude that was negative. That is, below ground level. This in turn successively triggered a premature release of the parachute and the back shell, a brief firing of the braking thrusters and finally activation of the on-ground systems as if Schiaparelli had already landed. In reality, the vehicle was still at an altitude of around 3.7 kilometers.'' ESA said the sequence of events ``has been clearly reproduced in computer simulations of the control system's response to the erroneous information.''

From a software engineering perspective, what could have been done to avoid this costly crash?