An unmanned aerial vehicle includes a closely integrated emergency recovery and operation systems for an unmanned aerial vehicle with built-in levels of redundancy and independence to maximize the likelihood of a controlled velocity landing. The unmanned aerial vehicle may include multiple processors and multiple state estimating modules such as inertial measurement units to independently determine the operational and error status of the unmanned aerial vehicle. Base on predictive or projected computations, the emergency recovery system may determine a suitable time for a recovery action, such as parachute deployment, and execute the recovery action.