Britain’s Beagle 2 lander has finally been spotted, 12 years after it went missing while trying to land on the surface of Mars.

The beleaguered spacecraft, which has become a byword for mission failure, was spotted by scientists operating the HiRise camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was discovered just 6km from its original touchdown site in the Isidis Planitia basin.

And it appears that just one faulty motor was behind the unsuccessful landing. The images show that solar panels which should have folded out to reveal a radio antennae, failed to open.

Previously it was thought that the lander had been destroyed on impact after crashing to the ground when its parachute and airbags failed to deploy.

But now it seems Beagle 2 made it safely to the surface but was crippled when it could not link up to Earth.

“We were always pretty sure that we didn’t miss the planet, but there was no knowledge of where it was because there was no signal at all” said Prof Mark McCaughrean, Senior Science Advisor at the European Space Agency (ESA)

“Since it went missing people have been trying to look for it in the images which have been available from Mars Express and the NASA orbiter, but Mars is big and Beagle 2 is small.

“But now we have found a candidate which could be Beagle 2. It is the right size and shape. It looks like there is evidence that the parachute worked and the air bags deployed.

“What seems to be the case is that it got to the ground. But a motor which opened the solar panels didn’t work.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11349163/Beagle-2-found-on-surface-of-Mars-after-vanishing-for-12-years.html

I had been hoping that Beagle would be seen, each time a new spacecraft went into orbit around Mars. But after 12 years!

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

“The HiRise camera is the only camera with sufficient resolution to spot the missing spacecraft. The HiRise team has already found the twin Viking landers which touched down on Mars in the 1970s and photographed Nasa’s Phoenix, Curiosity and Opportunity rovers. The team has been hunting for Beagle 2 for several years.”

Good.

“Packed full of sensitive apparatus, Beagle 2 was supposed to sample rocks and soil, seeking out signs of life by looking for carbon signatures.
A similar system formed part of the instrument package on the Philae probe that landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November.”

That’s interesting. Beagle is the only deep space probe funded by public donations. To keep costs way down it was a miracle of miniaturisation. I was concerned that it had never been repeated, but if the instrument package on Philae is based on a similar system then the experiences learnt in making Beagle were not truly wasted.

mollwollfumble said:

I had been hoping that Beagle would be seen, each time a new spacecraft went into orbit around Mars. But after 12 years!

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

Um, it was NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter that failed due to a metric/imperial mix-up. Can’t remember such a claim being made about Beagle. The normal verdict with Beagle was that there were just too many “single-point failures” built into the design concept. Here’s Wiki on Mars Climate orbiter:

The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor ’98 Orbiter) was a 338 kilogram (750 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ’98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf×s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N×s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Bubblecar said:

mollwollfumble said:

I had been hoping that Beagle would be seen, each time a new spacecraft went into orbit around Mars. But after 12 years!

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

Um, it was NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter that failed due to a metric/imperial mix-up. Can’t remember such a claim being made about Beagle. The normal verdict with Beagle was that there were just too many “single-point failures” built into the design concept. Here’s Wiki on Mars Climate orbiter:

The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor ’98 Orbiter) was a 338 kilogram (750 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ’98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf×s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N×s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Hard to imagine how that could happen without someone saying something.

But then, people do stupid things all the time.

party_pants said:

Hard to imagine how that could happen without someone saying something.

But then, people do stupid things all the time.

It’s a weird error even for Americans, since US scientists normally use metric despite the rest of the country’s addiction to clunky units.

mollwollfumble said:

I had been hoping that Beagle would be seen, each time a new spacecraft went into orbit around Mars. But after 12 years!

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

It also explodes the theory that it was aliens.

mollwollfumble said:

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

Why did the solar panels not deploy? A heavy landing due to an imperial/metric conversion mistake could have caused it.

Divine Angel said:

mollwollfumble said:

I had been hoping that Beagle would be seen, each time a new spacecraft went into orbit around Mars. But after 12 years!

You realise that this proves that all those claims that Beagle crashed because of a mistake in converting imperial to metric measurements are false. I suspected as much, the conversion affected only the factor of safety, not the actual descent trajectory. Explode one myth. I wonder how long it will take that myth to die.

It also explodes the theory that it was aliens.

!http://www.troll.me/images/ancient-aliens-guy/im-not-saying-its-aliens-but-its-aliens.jpg

Je suis alien.

Carmen_Sandiego said:

Why did the solar panels not deploy? A heavy landing due to an imperial/metric conversion mistake could have caused it.

As I explained above, moll’s got his Mars missions mixed up.

Bubblecar said:

Carmen_Sandiego said:

Why did the solar panels not deploy? A heavy landing due to an imperial/metric conversion mistake could have caused it.

As I explained above, moll’s got his Mars missions mixed up.

Oops.

as a general rule the legal system feeds off disarray and nurtures it , feeding off it

serial offenders are the best food source

so you keep allowing them walk the streets and now then the problem they have caused cones around and bites one of them on the arse – rarely though

any way you’ve heard it all before

wookiemeister said:

as a general rule the legal system feeds off disarray and nurtures it , feeding off it

serial offenders are the best food source

so you keep allowing them walk the streets and now then the problem they have caused cones around and bites one of them on the arse – rarely though

any way you’ve heard it all before

wrong thread