Still No Contact from Beagle 2 637
Many of you have submitted this, so this will be a condensing of the relevant information. WebfishUK writes: "The BBC has just released this story which announces the failure of the latest and possibly best chance to contact the British built Mars probe, Beagle 2. Given that Mars Express was designed to communicate with Beagle (unlike the earlier attempts with NASA's Mars Odyssey), this may indicate that something catastrophic has happened to Beagle 2." From Bromrrrrr: "[The]
ESA is reporting that the Mars Express, which everybody was hoping would be able to get through to the poor lost puppy, has failed its first attempt. 'We have not lost hope yet to contact Beagle 2, but we also know that it has landed on an unforgiving planet,' said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science." and I-R-Baboon adds: "The Mars Express mothership from the EU passed 350 km over the intended landing site of the Beagle 2 hearing only silence. Although nothing was heard, hope has not been given up yet, as scientists will keep trying until February, with more passovers of the Beagle 2's landing site on January 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, and 14th." Additional updates can be obtained from the Beagle 2 homepage as well as from the ESA's homepage for the Mars Express. Here's hoping that the lander is only down, and not out.
Calling it quits? (Score:4, Funny)
Damon,
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:2)
Damon,
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since it folded up its solar panels for flight is it possible to re fold them up and knock some dust off?
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm asking because I really don't know. Was this thing built to withstand a dust storm?
Damon,
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Funny)
Besides, windshield wipers would have been infeasible; where on Mars would they buy Wiper fluid from when they run out?
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is your definition of smart, then?
Oh, and I'll give kudos to the scientists... they clearly deserve it. But I can't rehire them. I'd like to know what politicians funded this so I can make sure they get hired again (or at least cast my vote). Anybody know?
--
Evan
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, it's not rocket sci -- er, um, never mind.
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the surface, they would appear to be equally as smart as the people who built, launched, and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space, but failed to get it into orbit around Mars because of a mid-flight command error that most people would call stupid. I don't believe either team is stupid, but both teams are equally prone to honest mistakes. There are sometimes gla
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask 'em. Most people at NASA are happy to talk about their work. It's not generally classified, and there's no NDA. When the really obvious or cool stuff is prefaced with "Why didn't you..." the response is almost always "We thought about that, but we didn't have the -foo- budget". Where foo is time, money, materials, weight or space. Often there are lots of cool ideas and the end result is much more simple and less featureful... but the remaining features are rock solid and tested 20 times to Sunday.
Some features are also dropped because a team (sometimes in an outside company) couldn't deliver their package on deadline and fully tested. Each payload tends to have a couple dozen little projects each provided by some university. Sometimes when one project is trimmed, for structural or other reasons, a perfectly good project is also cut.
So there's lots of thought into these probes. An amazing amount. Pretty much anything that you think is stupid has been done for a reason, and the ultimate reason is "we didn't want the whole probe to fail, so we simplified it". It's a very expensive shot, and if the solar panels don't deploy because the mechanism was over-engineered and got brittle in space (cold + radiation), the whole project is dead.
Depending on where you live, NASA and JPL has a pretty good lecture circuit going, and they have speakers that really know their stuff... even the astronauts. They are incredibly conservative engineers, and it seems to me that they should be - even with very conservative engineering, keeping everything as simple and as tested as possible, they run into problems. On a shakedown cruise of a new battleship, they can dock back again if there's a problem... or just fix it at sea. NASA is using up massively complex systems that have to work the first time they are tested. And then the design is thrown away because tech (materials, computer and science knowledge) has advanced by the next time they shoot. Plus they are an open organization that works with hundreds of companies and universities and has to QA everything.
If it sounds like I'm awestruck by them, it's for a simple reason. Everytime I have ever talked to somebody from NASA or JPL about the details of space I have always been totally impressed by their operation.
--
Evan
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean for the love of god, as someone already said, how can you call people who sent a semi-autonomous robot through space to land on another planet stupid? (Which might I add, entails strapping a machine with sensitive equipment onto a massive, giant, firework. It then has to survive extremely violent vibrations during launch, which involves igniting thousands and thousands of pounds of propellant. Then it needs to survive radation and other nasties out in space. Then it has to go through an atmosphere (a weaker one than ours, but an atmosphere nonetheless) and survive extreme heat buildup, only to have a parachute be released which produces a short burst of extreme G's (or whatever you'd get from a quick, violent slowdown, and I could be wrong, I just assume it would be pretty violent), and then, on top of all that, it could bounce on inflated airbags for miles until it finally comes to a rest near, if not on the target zone, unfolds, and then sends pictures and other data back to Earth? Yeah, they're stupid allright.)
Perhaps wipers would have scratched dust or the equivelant of sand across the solar panels worse than just the wind. Or maybe the wind is enough to keep them operating until other parts of the machine fail.
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Calling it quits? (Score:3, Interesting)
martians! (Score:3, Funny)
They have much better aim than, say, Saddam Hussein's SCUD missle launchers!
Hey, maybe Saddam hid his better weapons of mass destruction ON MARS!!!!!!!!!!!
Re:martians! (Score:2, Funny)
Vyger (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps someday a martian will stumble across it, fix it, make it intelligent, and Bagel will come back to us searching for its Creator.
next time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:next time (Score:2)
How can this be "interesting" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission, and you want to put in armoured (read: heavy) modules for when it all goes wrong ?
What purpose would this serve ? So we can now get a photo where the 6 white pixels (and I'm being *very* generous with the resolving power of the orbital cameras) are the lander. Whoosh. What now ? And to do that, we leave out the gas spectrometer, perhaps ?
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
Simon.
Re:How can this be "interesting" ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How can this be "interesting" ? (Score:3, Interesting)
They just didn't have time.
The Beagle was a very late add-on, and not only a shoestring budget but it was also built very fast, if they'd thoroughly tested every system they would not have finished it by the time launch window closed.
Yeah, they are rocket scientists, but they are not successfull rocket scientists yet. NASA, the USAF, the Soviets, and the Chinese had their s
Re:next time (Score:5, Informative)
- "I have entered atmosphere and everything seems to be in order"
- "I have started to bounce on the martian surface"
- "I have stopped bouncing on the surface and is still alive"
etc...
It might still not be able to easily pinpoint where it crashed if it had done so, but it would at least work like a primitive "black box" doing the best it can to tell what went wrong. Since this is obviously also good to know to learn from mistakes.
Read more here [nasa.gov].
Re:next time (Score:5, Interesting)
It all boils down to: you build the best spacecraft that you can within budget and weight restraints, and hope for the best. Even if you build in a lot of redundancy, there is still chance of failure. At some point you need to decide what to do: take a chance, or lose science. I guess in the end different people will come to different conclusions on how much of a chance you're willing to take.
Re:next time (Score:3, Informative)
Re:next time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:next time (Score:5, Funny)
How heavily armored do you think that radio would have to be to survive hitting the surface at 10,000 mph? Or even 500 mph, for that matter? Flight data recorders aren't designed to keep functioning after a crash - they're designed to preserve the recording.
Here's a better idea for a cheap 'beacon' - fill a bladder with a bunch of flourescent dye, then when it disappears you look for the big splat.
radioactive material (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:next time (Score:5, Funny)
you'd expect to see... (Score:2)
Correction (Score:3, Informative)
That would be the Mars Odyssey, not Opportunity.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Funny)
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for beagle-2.co.uk:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)
Alas (Score:4, Funny)
I'm European (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's down... and won't get up again. Let's just rejoice over the spirit pictures.... It is something, even if it wans't funded by our tax euros.
Re:I'm European (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm European (Score:5, Funny)
Just think about it, to get to Mars they had to get a spacecraft going faster than a bullet in just the right direction so that a few months in the future it would hit something that is little more than a red speck in the night sky.
Man, what a pain (Score:5, Funny)
It's dead, Jim (Score:3, Funny)
The victim of lame slashdot humor. It never had a chance.
What about the US? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about the US? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about the US? (Score:5, Informative)
Guess not, eh?
Re:What about the US? (Score:3, Insightful)
At the rate that the US probe can travel - it would take *YEARS* to get the the Beagle 2's remains. (this is assuming that Mars is flat - it isen't, it has huge valleys and mountains.)
Even then, it would be of no use - if the Beagle can't open itself, Sprit's arm woulden't have enought torque to help out. And beagle would be probably covered in dust.
Plus! We don't even
Re:What about the US? (Score:2)
Sure, but it could take close photographs, and NASA could send them to ESA, so that they would better understand what went wrong.
But then again, as you said, It would probably be faster to send a manned mission to discover it...
Re:What about the US? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about the US? (Score:2)
I think they can do that just fine by dropping probes back here on Earth. I'm pretty sure that NASA is much more interested in examining terrain that hasn't been disturbed and contaminated.
Re:What about the US? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about the US? (Score:3, Informative)
according to NASA they shall be kept operational for at least 90 days
thus minus the first 10 days without planned movement gives them a radius of about
3,2 km
no chance buddy
The Beagle 2 finally sent a reply. (Score:5, Funny)
Nudging flipping? (Score:2, Interesting)
The solarpanels might generate energy after some handeling. But can the Rover do that?
Re:Nudging flipping? (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) landing all the probes at the same location because of a slim chance that they can help each other, or
(2) land them all across the planet so you can learn more.
JanMark from slashdot would like (1), but it looks like the rockets scientists chose (2).
Re:Nudging flipping? (Score:2)
And B2 doesn't need to be just flipped over. Maybe the airbags didn't work properly and it's still very well encapsulated in loads of airbags that never deflated? Maybe it just formed a small crater on Mars?
Too many maybe's for NASA to even think about trying to rescue i
Pitch Black (Score:2)
Damnit, didn't he see Red Planet [imdb.com] in time?!
McCoy... (Score:2, Funny)
He's dead, Jim!
Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you never learn until you've tried and failed. Perhaps next time.
What I do find disappointing is the first post above though. I'm obviously disappointed for us Brits that our first Mars probe has died a death, but I'm elated the US managed to get theirs to work perfectly. Pity the feelings aren't reciprocal
Simon.
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3)
[Grin] And given my nick, I find it amusing that
Simon
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
Simon
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:5, Insightful)
Noo, some americans can't do that. Many went:
"USA 1 - ESA 0" (even if ESA barely funded Beagle, relatively speaking), "Take that, Beagle!", etc...
I must say I left the channel with a bitter aftertaste. I wasn't really angry, but sad how we had such a great time before and how happy I were for the USA, and then get this thrown in my face. And now, yet again, by certain immature Slashdot visitors. I'm still amazed that USA has landed a vehicle on another world (even if it has happened before), but I just can't find words for the feelings some people have against the ESA and can't really understand why. Does everything have to be a competition? This isn't the cold war, NASA guys has personally expressed their concerns about the Beagle and tried to contact it, the B2 funders are friendly people struggling hard to rescue it... It just makes me sad that some people feel so strongly against other parts of the world.
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:5, Interesting)
Every article on
And also, what's wrong with competition? I like any type of game/sport whatever thats clean(where the rules are followed) and competitive. I think it's fun and I think the results are much better. Who do you play harder against, some stranger you've never met and will never see again, or your best friend whom will probably try and improve and beat you? Your best friend of course, because of competition, even if afterwards you go have a beer together and hardly think about it again. Personally, I'd love to see another space race minus the 10ks Nukes aimed at each other. Even though I'm sure every nuclear country has figured out how to nuke every other country.
So my response, and I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, is more in retaliation against all the anti-us stuff than being anti-europe.
Nothing wrong with competition... (Score:3, Interesting)
Excesses are generally bad on my book.
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair enough. The world as a whole is in a bit of a snit about America these days, it is true.
We're all feeling like George W. and his cronies want to make us their bitch, and nobody wants to bend down to get their soap just at the moment. People are in a pissy mood.
That being said, many Americans are spectacularly oversensitive about criticism. Listen man, if I say I don't like the current US stance towards the UN, or on Kyoto, or whatever, that doesn't mean I hate America. Sheesh, people need to g
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:4, Insightful)
Jugulator, although to be fair, you did take a crack at NASA with a Metric joke here [slashdot.org]. Hmmm... then again I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were simply (correctly) pointing out that it was an embarrasing mistake, and not some blane us-bashing like we're too stupid or something.
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone say otherwise? Did anyone say you suck? Stop acting so aggressively. You ARE the leading space exploring nation in the world. I, as a swede, really like the US for still pushing the frontier further for every mission.
I think
Good show. (Score:5, Insightful)
If not contacted soon.... (Score:2)
going in circles (Score:2, Funny)
Well, That's It (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, who wants to be the one responsible for leaving a beagle on Mars? Can you just imagine the commercials?
"Lost: Puppy on Red Planet. Will accept offers to build a multi-billion dollar spacecraft to retrieve him. Answers to the name Beagle. Please help him come home with your donation."
I'm telling you, if people fall for Nigerian and Viagra schemes, we can get them to finance this thing within 10 years. Maybe less, if we also target the people who buy penis enhancement pills.
If I were a martian... (Score:4, Funny)
Mars is *not* a landfill!
Ruining our ecosystem with your trash!
Death to earth!
Where's the ka-boom?
Unforgiving planet? (Score:5, Funny)
Well now there's the problem -- next time we should just go to a forgiving planet instead. What were we thinking?
An important lesson learned (Score:2)
However, the lesson I think should be learnt is that in space, one often needs to be lucky for
Price Vs Performance (Score:2, Troll)
1 succesfully landed
2nd in route
Beagle / Mars Express : 345 Million
1 beagle missing In Action
Mars Express working and in orbit
Guess Research and Development Costs is actualy WORTHWHILE
UGh! (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought
Beagle 3 (Score:4, Informative)
Beyond Beagle
Meanwhile, UK science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who was at a Beagle news conference in North London on Monday, gave the strongest indication yet that the British Government would help fund the European Space Agency's (Esa) Aurora programme.
"We need to be working with Esa to ensure that, in some form, there is a Beagle 3 that takes forward this technology. I very much hope that the Aurora programme which is currently being developed by Esa will take forward this kind of exploration."
The Aurora programme is Esa's bold vision to land probes, and perhaps eventually, astronauts on the Red Planet.
From here [bbc.co.uk].
No control between Dec 19th and Dec 25th (Score:5, Interesting)
Beagle-2 then was in free-flight, from December 19th til December 25th. Thats 6 days of free flight with no way to really track Beagle-2 nor do anything about it if it were found to be off-course.
Usually a space probe is tracked via the radio signals that are sent to Earth. Speed and location are usually derived from measuring the Doppler effect on the radio singls. I haven't read anything to date about any methods the ESA was able to use after December 19th to verify that Beagle-2 was in the correct position for landing and all. I kept reading stuff saying that "Beagle-2 and Mars Express are now XXX kilometers away from each other", but I'm not sure how they deduced this other than calculating it based on the path and inclination that Beagle-2 *should have* been on. What if it started in an unexpected slow spin after release? What if its angle of attack was over the engineering limit?
Feel free to correct my knowledge if I am off-base here. I'm interested to know if/how ESA was able to contact Beagle-2 between Dec 19th and Dec 25th when it was in free flight.
Re:No control between Dec 19th and Dec 25th (Score:4, Informative)
If the spacecraft were tumbling, the strength of the signal would have varied in a regular way, and they would have detected that.
Also, they were able to contact the lander while in free flight. The Earthside antennas that they used to try to get the signal on the 25th would also have been used to communicate with the spacecraft in free flight.
Lost Dog (Score:3, Funny)
And by landed on we mean crashed into.
someone will stumble over Beagle2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I'm talking about humans on Mars, being casual and knocking about the place, kicking over rocks on a lazy day, sometime in my lifetime. It could be my son or daughter grown up. Or your own, or even yourself if you are young now. Keep that in mind today, it helps to take the edge off this sort of temporary setback.
Don't forget Mars Express... (Score:4, Informative)
On the website [esa.int] we can read:
The Mars Express Orbiter will:
image the entire surface at high resolution (10 m/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 m/pixel)
produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 m resolution
map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation
determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometres
determine the effect of the atmosphere on the surface
determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind
All of that sounds really cool.
It's not really a failure for the Brits (Score:3, Funny)
Bravely navigate the endless black depths of space to a new and strange planet. Then crash.
beagle found (Score:3, Funny)
crash image [lemuria.org]
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:2, Funny)
In Sovjet Russia... nah...
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:4, Informative)
There is such a thing as a bad winner you know.
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's with the anti-french sentiments? I really don't get it. Don't forget that without the french you wouldn't have won the war of independence and you wouldn't have the statue of liberty.
Yes, but after our war for independance France went into a serious decline. It got much much worse after Napoleon. WWII finished them off. Now they don't even fight their own battles anymore. There is not a lot to be proud of with respect to France these days. It is sad, but true.
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever I read obvious BS like this on /. I bookmark the post, wait until I get new mod points and mod it down once I do.
We had your kind of patriotism in Germany too once you know? It's called fascism now.
Well if you are truly German perhaps reports of superior German education are unfounded after all. Allow me to give you a demonstration in political science 101.
What you are referring to in actually Nationalism. A firm belief that your country is the best. Nationalism gets a bad rap in part beca
Psst, Babbage was British and working in the UK! (Score:5, Informative)
The difference and analytical engines wew design by a Brit in the UK. The Z3 was German and the bombes and in particular, Colossus for code cracking were British, albeit the bombes had some Polish input. The first commercial electronic computer was built by a British company as was the first virtual memory computer. Essentially it wasn't until the superior buying power of major corporations and the US government spurred development over in the US. The European market was very fragmented then and without a large single domestic market, they fell behind.
USSR & the moon (Score:2)
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:5, Interesting)
only country to attempt to go to the moon (russians never wanted to go, nor planned to go) sending shit out the solar system is nothing, u just push it, first to discover life on mars? we'll see...
The Russians planned and tried to go to the moon. But when we got there first, they gave out that story of "Nyah, we never wanted to go to that dirty ol' moon, anyhow!" (insert pout and kicking at the dirt). The soviet space program is well documented and the records have been declassified.
Sending stuff out of the solar system is not nothing. I mean there is the matter of escaping the gravity well of the sun. It requires some interesting physics.
Life on Mars, well, that is debatable. Scientists have claimed to find simple fossilized life in meteorites that were thought to have come from Mars, and there were I think at one time claims that there were were bacteria-like lifeforms on rocks that were brought back from Mars, but the jury is still out. ET has not shown up yet. Still these were NASA discoveries.
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Chalk one up to American quality! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me condense the relevant info further (Score:5, Insightful)
The US succeeded where the EU did not
Yeah. Of course, it's totally unheard for an American space project to blow up, or fail completely because the scientists couldn't even manage to seperate metric measurements from imperial. Let's face it, the Beagle landed in a crater. Tragic, but it's not incompetence.
Feeling the need to declare your nation's superiority on Slashdot is quite the sign of insecurity.
Re:Still no luck (Score:5, Funny)
Dupe [slashdot.org].
On the plus side, though, you're well on your way to becoming a Slashdot editor.
Userfriendly said it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Still no luck (Score:4, Funny)
Either my contact lens prescription is woefully out of date, or my brain has veered into wishful-thinking territory.
- David Stein
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You figure it out (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Can lost spacecraft ever be tracked? (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to keep in mind the scale. The landers are very small objects, compared to the angle and depth of focus of the cameras on the satellites, which are dealing with a *planetary* scale.
If you drop your watch in the grand canyon, do you think you'd ever find it?
US patherfinder was photgraphed (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there was a weak attempt to locate the failed 1999 lander's parachute photographically. The high resolution camera can only see miniscule parts of the surface.