Beagle 2 Probe Lands; No Signal Received Yet 364
securitas writes "The BBC reports that Europe's Beagle 2 Mars lander has failed to broadcast its landing confirmation signal. While project leaders are trying to put a brave face on it, the failure is seen as a major setback. The Beagle is out of broadcast range but another contact attempt will be made later today, when they hope a signal will be detected. Another failed Mars mission will solidify Mars' reputation as a spacecraft graveyard. More at icWales and News24."
Nothing bad in failures IMHO (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't give up yet! (Score:1, Insightful)
We still have the Jodrell Bank telescope, and in January the US probes to come to rescue, if all else fails.
But really? What is there that is killing the probes? A previously unknown radiation belt? Some unknown properties of Mars? Global conspiracy to cover up the interesting findings? Ancient Martian defence systems?
Premature Assessment, Plus Sloppy Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
It's premature to call the failure to hear the initial signal as a "major setback". For Reuters to do so without attributed that assessment to anyone is sloopy journalism. Why would anyone care what Reuters thinks?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Waiting for more data... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are already 2 functional spacecrafts - Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey in orbit. And Mars Express, Spirit, and Opportunity will be arriving soon.
Surely 5 spacecrafts will be able to pick any signal the Beagle may be broadcasting, or otherwise find signs of the wrecks.
Ironically my pc was playing Joy to the World when I read this... the downside of scheduling this kind of things around this time. WinAmp was promptly shut down.
Re:Premature Assessment, Plus Sloppy Journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
See the probes are lost because if they work on their secondary or tertiary attempts then they suddenly become "rescued!" or "alive!" and now the little lost probe is a hero! GO PROBE!
Like it or not our journalism ratchets up the drama at every single opportunity, unfortunately for many they can't see through the fear tactics and live in a state where they believe the world is getting worse and even more dangerous every day. Both of those assumptions are quite wrong.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper comparison is either how many of the 30 met mission goals, or how many of the lander attempts were successful. The success rate under either standard is much higher than the BBC quote would indicate.
Re:This is all . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't give up yet! (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably a combination of budgetary constraints and a poor understanding of the engineer challenges necessary to land a probe on the planet.
Not over yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery Required to Unfold Solar Array? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shipping with sev 1 defects (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't lose sight of the point of this mission - which is to gather data from the sruface of Mars. I understand what you're saying, but if you don't even make the attempt, then you've definitely failed to accomplish your primary goal. At least by trying, even with such serious defects, you stand some chance.
Also, don't forget the way in which government funding works sometimes, ie use it or lose it. This may have been a one-off chance, use the money now, or don't, and have no guarantee of getting any more in the future.
I was at university when a rocket exploded shortly after lift off, destroying a European probe a few years ago (this would've been mid-90s). Our department's astro group had designed and created one of the experiments that was on board, and our then head of department was also the head of that group. It happened the day before a department meeting at which he was supposed to give a speech; he was too upset to attend. My point being that the scientists have a hell of a lot invested in this sort of thing; they wouldn't go ahead with something if they didn't think that they had at least a fighting chance of it working.
Re:Nothing bad in failures IMHO (Score:4, Insightful)
He was landing our first space capable vehicle, by flying skills alone, long before the "dumb chimp in a bullet" mode of spaceflight was developed.
And do I need to point out that automated landing systems are superior to manned controls ONLY WHERE THERE ARE NO UNKNOWN VARIABLES?
If it's a weird, strange environment, send a Aerospace force pilot. If it's a Weird, Strange and possibly hostile environment, send in a Navy carrier pilot.
Re:Shipping with sev 1 defects (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate to spoil your romantic ideas about ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have worked in some fields of science and the tech industry, too, it's like Dilbert in many ways, and I don't see why jerks like that shouldn't build our space probes, too.
Just think of the Ariane 5 maiden flight failure that cost a billion bucks or so and how you'd have to be a complete jerk to fuck up the thing the way they did, I'll dig out the story if someone is interested.
It's maybe a general trend these days with big project, may it be a space probe or a big software project in the private sector.
Tech projects on this magniture simply require a lot of vision and character to place the bigger goal before your primal instincts, i.e. not to turn it into a game of who has the bigger dick each day, and most people just aren't up to it.
I just read the article about the ITER fusion reactor and thought how'd that be a cool job working there saving the world etc., but then I imagined some stuck-up moron as a boss telling me to install an SQL database in mauve and thought hell no.
Re:My favorite theory (non-conspiracy) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speed & Thermals (Score:3, Insightful)
The acceleration to get into earth orbit is the same wherever you're going, and that's the massive 8 or more g's you see astronauts training for in centrifuges. Then you can boost at low accleration, for as long as your fuel allows, to get the required delta v. Or do a gravitational boost, which creates no acceleration stress, if orbits and time allow. 2) The thermal cycle of daily heating/cooling is less extreme on Venus than on Mars. Yes, you do have pressure to worry about on Venus... but the thermal cycle is what beats the hell out of electrical connections.
The atmosphere of Venus is very high pressure, hot and acidic and most probes survived only minutes on the surface -- certainly the early ones did, and I don't think the later ones did much better. The Mars probes that survived landing lasted as long as their power did, four months for Pathfinder, through the steep diurnal temperature cycles.
BBC is somewhat misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
This is kind of misleading. Of the 30 total missions to Mars, only nine were attempted landers. THis gives a lander failulre rate of 1/3 instead of 1/10, which BBC implies. The other 21 craft were orbiters and the like.
On a further note, I felt BBC did indulge in nationalistic bias as of yesterday, which people in Slashdot previously praised them of not doing with this story. Firstly, there's the misleading lander success rate above. They also compared to the successful US missions, calling them costly and implying wasteful. Although now that they cannot get a signal from the craft they took this bit out of the story.
This is misleading because the two Viking landers were built decades ago using even older technology. The more recent Mars Pathfinder event was, however, on a cheaper budget, part of a Nasa Discovery Mission, which built/tested the craft for 150 million. This approach included researching the parachute/airbag landing, which the Beagle 2 was able to imitate. ALso, comparing the cost of building a rover (Pathfinder) vs. a robot arm (Beagle) isnt' fair as a rover is much more complex.
On a different note, all hope is not lost yet. There are still banks of receiver antennas in case the Beagle's antenna is pointing the wrong way such that NASA's Mars Odyssey craft couldn't pick it up.
Re:Shipping with sev 1 defects (Score:3, Insightful)
If blowing up on launch was a problem that was known to you, then yes. Blowing up because of unforseen conditions isnt what I'm talking about. For example, the Columbia disaster - the breaking up of the foam which lead to the tragedy was not something that was forseeable - atleast to the degree that would make it a factor in planning. If on the other hand, your design constraints force you to say design something that can die in bad weather and if you have no control over whether it will encounter bad weather then yes, you are "shipping with a known sev 1".
Note that adverse weather conditions exist on earth for launch of spacecraft, but we can control that by picking and chosing the launch dates. There is no way to control the landing weather conditions for the Beagle 2. Atleast if they had designed the spacecraft to the able to pick and chose good weather conditions at the landing site as a moment for landing, that would have been an acceptable solution. This wasnt the case.
Did You Read Anythig? This Isn't About BBC! (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, the point is that the Reuters report used, without attribution, the phrase "major failure". In other words, it is Reuters itself calling this a "major setback". Reuters lacks the credentials to make that judgement. That's why it's sloppy journalism. If someone with credentials said it and Reuters omitted the attribution, that's one kind of sloppy journalism. If the Reuters reporter conjured the phrase out of thin air, that's another kind of sloppy journalism.
Journalism is full of talking heads and reporters who insist on telling us what they think. If I want to learn what someone thinks, I'll read the editorial page or look for a columnist, but I want unsourced opinions kept out of the news.
Re:Especially when you consider... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here you do have a point, but I'll argue its simply because back then a hard drive was so expensive to make that they made them to last ("What do you mean this $1,000 HD died after a year?!?"). Today's hard drives are definately built cheaper, partially because they're cheap enough that people don't mind replacing them, and partially because we've been conned into believing that hard drives are disposable. OTOH, you can buy higher quality hard drives for a higher price, and they too will last longer.
Same goes for printers, I've got an ancient HP laser printer, it weighs about 150 pounds. It is slow, and (back when it was new) cost in the $2000 range. Still works great. No mystery though, its the same concept: if you pay $2000 you expect it to *last*, you pay $150 (what I paid for my newest laser printer) you really can't reasonably expect it to last so long.
Here I'll disagree, I have no doubt that people building space probes will take the money to buy the more expensive (and more reliable) parts.As for the success of the 1970's era probes I'll argue two things, firstly the various agencies had bigger budgets (when inflation if factored in), which meant they could build better probes. Secondly, I'll say that luck plays a big part in this, Mars is a long damn way off, all sorts of stuff can happen on the trip.
Re:Dust storms: no problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A landing probe would be sitting underneath a parachute tens of metres in diameter for approximately 2 to 3 minutes while drifting downwards. Although the force of this theoretical 150mph wind is low, thereby giving a low acceleration, given enough time the force acting on this huge surface area WILL accelerate the craft to 150 mph. That would be seriously bad news as an impact with the ground at that speed would destroy any lander, no matter what type of airbags it was using.
P.S. I am also an Aerospace engineer and work for the company that was responsible for the aerodynamics, heat shield sizing and trajectory of Beagle2. So I bloody well hope it's OK. I blame the airbags personally.