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Space Science

A Spot For Beagle On Mars 32

Posted by timothy from the hope-it's-not-a-dog dept.
bitva writes: "A landing site has been chosen for the 2003 UK Mars mission. Here's the finer details." Beagle 2, being built now in the UK, will sample air and soil of the red planet, looking for evidence of Martian life. They even have a nice Minesweeper-looking map illustrating the ellipse within which the Beagle must land, in "Isidis Planitia, a large flat region."
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A Spot For Beagle On Mars More

A Spot For Beagle On Mars

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  • Re:And why is it called "Beagle"? (Score:3)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @08:05PM (#545880)
    The name "Beagle" (it's actually called the Beagle 2) is a tip of the hat to the great explorer/scientist C. Darwin. In 1831 Darwin joined the HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist, much to his fathers consternation, who said to him "it's a wild scheme and no good would come of it".

    Of course the observations made on that particular voyage of 170 years ago would be used to write "On the Origin of Species" and subsequently turn the western world on it's head with the realization of Evolution.

    Hence, the high hopes for revolutionary discovery that lead to the probes name "Beagle 2".



  • the distance the moon, is only 500,000 miles round trip dude.
  • Of all the places on Mars to explore, it seems like the Face would be a better target than others. Maybe they are just afraid of something happening like in "Mission to mars". :) Chris
  • I've never been to China, but my friend claimed to have been. He showed me a video of him in China.
    Of course I didn't believe him.
    How could someone travel that far? Everyone knows you'd get eaten by sea monsters on the way.
  • Seems they cute the funding for the Mars Society web site already :-( -Magnus
  • *nod* This is a very good case for always making sure what specs your contractors are working to. No doubt with the media attention that the NASA goof (well, contractor goof, but NASA missed it too) received, the Brits are triple-checking everything.

    It still might fail, as nothing is 100% certain, but it won't be because of measurement conversions. This time, the alien intelligences living beneath the surface of Mars will have to do their own dirty work! :P

    Kierthos
  • So the only country where the Imperial system is the standard is the US. Which is definitely not a good thing, one example being the NASA blunders.

    Another way to look at it is that, of the whole aerospace industry in the US, NASA is the only entity which uses metric units -- everyone else uses what we refer to as "US" units (sometimes called the "English system"). The Lockheed thruster calibration was done with US units -- as always -- and NASA didn't bother to check (they also didn't bother to cross-check after several course corrections didn't give the desired results... there "wasn't enough time or money" to do that).

    I've worked in this industry for a long time; the only time I've used metric units was on NASA projects, and then conversion to metric was the last thing done. NASA is the odd man out, when it comes to units. If you accept the argument that "everybody else does it this way," you have to decide which "everybody" you're talking about: the world vs. the US, or US aerospace industry vs. NASA. If the whole aerospace industry were to switch to metric today, I guarantee you there'd be many years worth of problems like the loss of the Mars Observer -- and some of 'em would involve people, not robotic spacecraft.

    ---

  • Don't you mean 30'x -30'? You've got your minus signs in the wrong place!

  • An experiment (probably futile) in replying to an AC:

    Atheist lies

    The parent article was just stating historical fact, a matter of record, really. And besides, "Atheist" is no longer pejorative, so this isn't even a good flame.

    I, for one am delighted that the British are reminding themselves of their scientific heritage for this, their most ambitious space mission yet. It sets up high expectations, but that's what you need to carry something like this forward.

    BTW, there are still those who claim that Viking discovered evidence of life [spacedaily.com], but this is a minority viewpoint.

  • The name of Darwin's ship (Beagle) was the first DM 1,000,000 question asked on Germany's version of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'.

    BTW, the guy decided to take the 500,000 bucks ;-)
  • The "face" is a rather uninteresting area. Here's [nasa.gov] a link to photographs of it taken with the Mars Global Surveyor [nasa.gov] which is in orbit around Mars now and photographing the entire surface in more detail than anything before. The area they are proposing landing the probe in includes areas with potential sedimentary rocks. Since the existence of sedimentary rocks potentially implies water, this is far more interesting than most random areas (especially if they're considering anything related to searching for life).

    Of course, you realized that the "face" was mostly a coincidental artifact of lighting and relatively low resolution photography, and were trolling, and I've just fed the troll...

  • Do your part to help the Beagle 2 land (Score:5)

    by Chuck Flynn ( 265247 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @07:30PM (#545891)
    Join the Mars Society [xoom.com]. Philip Dembo [mailto], the chairman, is conducting a drive to mobilize support. Make sure this project isn't canned like some others; governments can be fickle, and the funding might not be there tomorrow (just ask the folks at the supercollider). And when you leave, make sure you stop at the giftshop [marssociety.com] and buy something -- 5% of proceeds go towards helping conquer Mars.

  • I hear... (Score:3)

    by segfault7375 ( 135849 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @07:33PM (#545892)
    I hear that the landing site will be 10 meters by 10 meters square, or 30 feet by 30 feet if you're a NASA engineer.

    segfaulteq@home.com [mailto]
  • No offense, but the problem was that the numbers weren't converted over, therefore, it didn't matter what system of measurements were being used, all that mattered was that there was more then one.

    If they had stuck to pure English units, they wouldn't have made the error. The error was that they assumed that the units they were working with were English units, its just as easy to make the other side of that mistake and assume all units are metric. Therefore, while there may be many good arguments for adopting the metric system, this isn't one of them.

    Just my $.02
  • You never know, they could be using something other than windows, and be playing a Java or shockwave version of minesweeper. I'm sure there are some out there.

    Or maybe they played one of those minesweeper games written in perl that placed in TPJ's obfuscation contest a while back... now there's a real game. Console mode. None of that pansy GUI business, no sir!

    Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.

  • And why is it called "Beagle"? (Score:3)

    by TekPolitik ( 147802 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @07:49PM (#545895) Journal
    The Beagle has landed.

    That's one small step for man, one giant leap for Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel.

  • Yeah, I think it would be pretty funny, if there was life on mars, and every 3 years the assholes from earth spend billions sending this probe, and the martians shoot it out of the air, the minute it shows up on their radar. Then they all sit around drinking beers and laughing at the stupid earthlings -Glenn
  • NASA uses metric consistently , but the contractor that built the polar lander used english units. So when NASA got data about the reentry engine burn from the contractor (IIRC Lockheed), it was in English units and NASA just took it for metric and hence a crash.

  • The science (Score:4)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @09:20PM (#545898) Homepage
    Information about the science the probe will do is at this site [beagle2.com].

    They've gone with a completely different approach to testing for life than the Viking landers, whose results were hard to interpret. (Some of the Viking results were what you'd expect if there were bacteria, and other results were what you'd expect if there weren't. See this [slashdot.org] Slashdot discussion.) It's going to test for traces of methane in the atmosphere, which would be a strong indicator of subterranean microbes. It's also going to analyze how much of the carbon in soil samples is in organic forms and how much is inorganic, and the isotope ratios of organic and inorganic carbon.

    If the results are positive, it'll be one of the two or three greatest scientific discoveries of all time.

  • ...that Onion article, "NASA Baffled By Failure Of Straw Shuttle". It's in their book, "The Onion's Finest News Reporting" [barnesandnoble.com].

    Couldn't find a link to it on The Onion's site, so here's a quote:
    "Explorer 2, like its predecessor, had been headed for the sun, where it was to be the first spacecraft to land on a star. "We'd hoped to bring back and study sun rock," Toshikima said.
    The straw ship had been equipped with a special reinforced wicker basket to hold the sun lava for its journey back to Earth. A straw-enforced robot arm was constructed to scoop the lava--which scientists say is as hot as the center of a nuclear holocaust--and place it in the basket.
    The ship's debris is slated to be used as mulch."

    Great stuff; I heartily reccomend both of their books.

    --Psi

    Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.

  • I would hope this would stir up some competitive nationalism in the US congress -- and they would in turn fund NASA enough that we could get some decent space missions around here ...

    I think if we wanna survive as a species, statistically we're gonna wanna get off this planet before something fucks up ... all of our eggs are kinda in one basket right now :)

  • Again it seems that we are seeing probes being sent to "less interesting places"...

    Personly I think that the place may risk to be relatively disappointing. But that also depends how far it wiil be from Syrtis. Near Syrtis there are some interesting forms called "black sands" or "black spots". Craters seem to have some "plastic" morphology in general. A few dark currents seem to be spotted on the North, but that's more Syrtis. The farer from Syrtis the most desertic and unfeatured it looks. Sand dunes seem to rule there, so let's hope that Herbert was not having visions from Mars while writing his book :)...

    Curious. This place seems one of the less shot by MOC. At least on the present level of published pictures...
  • Does the smiley face come up if they win?
  • Now we know why NASA has been screwing things up lately! The map (linked above) is clearly an indication that NASA (and other space agencies) are using Windows. The problem: they play Minesweeper instead of the "Mission Control" game. *grin*
  • By the looks of it, they are at least planning out the landing well. (Even if they do make it out to look like a cheesy game) That is more than we can say for our NASA peolpe who foget conversions. Would this even be a problem for countries who use the metric system the majority of the time? Or do they still have lingering remnants of the "English" system?

  • That's right, it's minesweeper (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The landing site for the ship was, in fact, determined by a game of minesweeper.
  • They're doing their part to make sure the sun never sets on the British Empire. Next year, I hear they plan to land a probe on the sun itself.
  • Well it at least shows some sense and some promise:
    The landing site has been chosen for the European spacecraft that will touch down on the surface of Mars in 2003.

    Beagle 2, which is being built by UK scientists and engineers, will land on Isidis Planitia, a large flat region that overlies the boundary between the ancient highlands and the northern plains of the Red Planet.

    The area appears to be a sedimentary basin where traces of life could have been preserved - if it ever developed on Mars.

    "This is the best site given the landing constraints and scientific aims of Beagle 2," said John Bridges, from the Natural History Museum, London, who has been assessing possible landing sites.

    Detailed scrutiny of images of the surface suggests that the number of rocks on the surface is not large enough to threaten a safe landing. The altitude of the site is also relatively low, which means the atmosphere should be thick enough to allow parachutes to brake the lander's descent effectively.

    I just hope that the Martian Defense Force doesn't take this one out like it did the earlier ones

    ;-)

  • Lets hope they do their conversions from metric correctly this time... I'd hate to see another space vehicle end up in a crater.
  • I think that basing a space mission on the biggest time wasting windows game could possibly beat that inches to centimeters thing......

  • Isn't that a standard map? Nothing minesweeper-ish (Score:3)

    by PsionicMan ( 74653 ) on Wednesday December 20, 2000 @07:43PM (#545910) Homepage

    There's really nothing particularly minesweeper-esque about it...

    It's just your standard, everyday map, divided into a grid, and with X's to mark things. Nothing to intersting there.

    Or am I missing something, and there's now a version of minesweeper that lets you draw shapes and mark mines anywhere, regardless of the grid?

    Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.

  • But aren't they trying to land in an area with 3 known Mines?

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