Lost Beagle2 Probe Found 'Intact' On Mars 130
New submitter Stolga sends this report from the BBC:
The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact. High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece. The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003, using parachutes and airbags — but no radio contact was ever made with the probe. Many scientists assumed it had been destroyed in a high-velocity impact.
The new pictures, acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, give the lie to that notion, and hint at what really happened to the European mission. Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University.
The new pictures, acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, give the lie to that notion, and hint at what really happened to the European mission. Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University.
I'm sick of this invasion of privacy! (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit! First it's spy satellites watching my every movement on earth, and now you can't even have privacy ON MARS!
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With all those Venutian women that Bud and Lou left behind, I won't be needing underwear for long anyway!
Re:parachutes? (Score:5, Informative)
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Nonsense! This is Slashdot. Here every guy who got better than a C in their high school physics course thinks they know better than engineers with real world experience.
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Isn't it normal for Slashdot users to keep their D outside the box?
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That is unless the petals failed to deploy because of a rough landing and something broke.
I'm inclined to think the parachute was more or less to orient the craft in a certain position so the other portions of the landing would work correctly. But then again, at the speeds it would have been traveling, slowing it a bit might have been a purpose too.
Re:parachutes? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Well shit, good thing you figured it out.
Better tell all those PHDs and other people who do that for a living before they blindly chuck any more multi-billion dollar probes at Mars without any effective means of slowing down.
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Never under-estimate the ability of a random poster to point out, after 2 minutes thought, things that so-called experts have jointly devoted hundreds of years of studying to, yet completely over-looked. Like they were total morons.
It's what makes internet forums the font of all human progress, and not ill-informed stupidity.
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Like the fact that the astronomers in Europe and the U.S might use different measuring systems? Gosh, I must be a schmuck to point out that those scientists with Ph.D.s might want to double check that when sending up a probe or a satellite, because hey, they're pretty smart and I'm an idiot, right?
More multi-billion dollar probes? (Score:2)
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"I guess the circuits controlling communications got screwed up, so it was assumed to be lost."
I know this is Slashdot and people is not expected to RTFA but you... guess!!!???
From the header:
"Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof
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one day when we get more resolution we will see that there is a red tag on one of the still stowed position petals that reads "removed before flight"
Re: parachutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny how you think metric is somehow non-standard.
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Re:parachutes? (Score:5, Informative)
It's still an atmosphere there - at the speeds that the payload is arriving parachutes will work fine to slow it down quite a bit. But for the final phase airbags and other means like braking rockets still are needed.
The initial hit on the atmosphere is a heat shield, but when that no longer is needed then you continue the slowdown with parachutes. Using rockets for the full deceleration is probably heavier than the parachutes otherwise they would have used them.
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Supplementing my post with this: http://www.astrobio.net/news-b... [astrobio.net]
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You just need really big parachutes.
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The ones they use are for supersonic use.
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Well don't just tell us, do something about it!
http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ca... [esa.int]
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The moon has ~10^-7 pascals of pressure, and Mars has ~.6 kilopascals of pressure. I leave computing the order of magnitude of difference to the reader.
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6... the answer is 6
Only if kilopascals and pascals were the same unit.
Re:parachutes? (Score:5, Interesting)
And you would be incorrect.
The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator [nasa.gov] is testing next-generation parachutes for landing things on Mars. They launch the test platform high up into Earth's atmosphere, where the air pressure and other conditions are most like Mars, then they test how the various new parachute and other drag tech works to slow it down again. Disclosure: My wife is one of the engineers that worked on the platform itself.
The parachute is not designed to be the final landing device, but if you don't use a parachute or other drag device as you approach when there is measurable atmosphere you'll burn up or crash hard. The atmosphere doesn't have to be very thick to still have friction.
Given what they said about Beagle's failure to deploy, I wonder if it broke during the airbag bounce process and the panel jammed.
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Had you RTFA, you would know it appears the landing was entirely successful. The darned solar petals, well, RTFA.
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Had you RTFA, you would know it appears the landing was entirely successful. The darned solar petals, well, RTFA.
If the landing was entirely successful, what prevented the solar panels from deploying? We don't know yet. Could have been a hard landing. That's not successful.
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Have you looked at the photos? They didn't make any such determination from those photo's. They know all the systems deployed properly because they can see them as they should have landed, they have no idea why the petals didn't unfold and in fact that's their only explanation for why it didn't contact as they don't actually have an image of it with enough detail to know it wasn't damaged.
But if you think they can determine that from the 3 or so pixels that make up the lander you obviously believe they have
On odd artifact of affect... (Score:5, Funny)
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At first glance, TFT suggests they found a veterinarian's anal thermometer in a most unlikely location.
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At first glance, TFT suggests they found a veterinarian's anal thermometer in a most unlikely location.
Damn, some asshole has my pencil.
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what like the back of a Volkswagen Beetle?
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Laika had to go somewhere.
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We've had lots of cats that have wandered off and... but that was the thing about the name, everybody congratulated us on the name Beagle 2 as inspirational, until after it didn't call in and we had all manner of e-mails, texts, telephone calls, letters saying didn't you realise that Beagles are the worst dogs you could possibly have to let off the leash - they run off, they chase something, they don't come back when they're called, they only come home when they're hungry and they show no sign of remorse.
design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw? Placement of the antenna that did not depend on success of unfurling is a lesson learned.
Re:design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:5, Funny)
So... blame it on the Martians for holding it wrong?
Re:design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw? Placement of the antenna that did not depend on success of unfurling is a lesson learned.
What will the point of that lesson be, if they don't build more space probes based on that design? And suppose they already knew ahead of time that this was a design flaw? Then the best you can say is that this accident confirmed that the design flaw was indeed a design flaw.
My point behind this observation is that there is an even more important lesson present here which continues to be ignored. There are considerable economies of scale to making multiple copies of a probe design. And here is one of those economies, you can actually take a "lesson learned" and use it to improve future implementation of the space probe design.
If they were to now reuse the Beagle 2 design, they would know to study and fix the solar cell unfurling mechanism in order to prevent a now proven failure mode. They would also know that the landing mechanisms mostly work (though they might have contributed in some way to the final failure mode).
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If they were to now reuse the Beagle 2 design, they would know to study and fix the solar cell unfurling mechanism in order to prevent a now proven failure mode.
To me that doesn't make any sense, since they have no idea why that design failed. They don't even know for sure it failed, perhaps the thing did hit way to hard on impact and these are the only pieces left that are together.
Even if the craft was still whole and it was simply the petals failing to unfold, you don't know why - Dust? Cold? You'd hav
Re:design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:5, Interesting)
To me that doesn't make any sense, since they have no idea why that design failed. They don't even know for sure it failed, perhaps the thing did hit way to hard on impact and these are the only pieces left that are together.
The article stated that they did have some idea why that design failed. They have images of the probe. In turn, this evidence indicates that the probe landed mostly intact with partial deployment of the solar panels.
Even if the craft was still whole and it was simply the petals failing to unfold, you don't know why - Dust? Cold? You'd have to guess and put in a fix based on that guess, but you wouldn't be sure.
Knowledge is imperfect. So what? There is more than enough here to repeatedly test landing and deployment. Even if the failure can't be exactly duplicated, they probably can figure out what systems were probably behind the failure.
Way better as others are saying to switch to a design (nuclear battery) without something that failed in some unknown way existing at all.
That introduces its own drawbacks and failure modes. And the reasons why they didn't choose that other system (such as not having access to plutonium 238) still apply.
Article states explicitly they do not know (Score:2)
From the article:
The failure cause is pure speculation
You said
The article stated that they did have some idea why that design failed.
What in the article supports your assertion? They gave a guess after they said it was only a guess. Saying they have "an idea" implies there is some proof to back up the "idea" which they do not have yet.
There is more than enough here to repeatedly test landing and deployment.
Are you saying they did not do that before the original launch? I'm pretty sure they had rigorous t
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What in the article supports your assertion? They gave a guess after they said it was only a guess. Saying they have "an idea" implies there is some proof to back up the "idea" which they do not have yet.
I think what's annoying about your question is that I completely answered it in my previous reply. The evidence I mentioned is by definition empirical proof.
And not all "pure" speculation is created equal. There is informed and uninformed speculation. Actual imagining of the crash site crosses that chasm.
Are you saying they did not do that before the original launch? I'm pretty sure they had rigorous testing before, guessing at the failure mode and then doing testing to see if your new design works to prevent your guessed failure mode is simply foolhardy.
Of course, they didn't test sufficiently! Else the accident wouldn't have happened in the first place!
I see you're just not getting it. You can't perfectly test any engineered system. But you can test
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Take a look at those images. They're trying to deduce a whole lot out of perhaps 10 pixels. If they has dropped a Vespa on the surface from 1 km up, it might look the same.
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Look at the last 20 seconds of this video [telegraph.co.uk] which borrows from old simulations of the Beagle 2 probe deployment which folded out the solar panels in a particular order. The fold-out deployment shown in the video, if prematurely halted with two panels to go, exactly matches the image. I'd say that ten pixels are more than enough in this case. Plus, they've also imaged other p
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That introduces its own drawbacks and failure modes. And the reasons why they didn't choose that other system (such as not having access to plutonium 238) still apply.
the failure mode was the "E" in ESA. nukes in orbit are a non-starter in Europe. the people won't stand for it, and since they are paying for it, nukes are off the table for space probes. for ESA missions, that means solar or no mission.
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the failure mode was the "E" in ESA. nukes in orbit are a non-starter in Europe. the people won't stand for it, and since they are paying for it, nukes are off the table for space probes. for ESA missions, that means solar or no mission.
And just as much resistance today as back when the Beagle 2 was being put together, right?
Re:design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Without solar panels, it would quickly run out of power, so you'd get barely anything done even if the antenna did deploy. Having the antenna underneath the panels probably helped protect it during atmospheric entry and landing as well.
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would have been nice.
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It's a pretty clever design, in terms of being compact, if everything had clicked into place.
It would have been the first direct life-detection experiment since the Viking probes of the 1970's.
It's a bummer how they got all the way to 3rd base when things went kafooey.
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What would be great is if MRO could try and make contact on its next fly-by. That antenna would certainly work under a solar panel, it would just have considerably less range. But knowing where it is now, we should be able to jam a signal down the front end and make contact.
If the solar chargers are still functioning with 2/3rds of the design power...
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King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk!
Re:design flaw with placement of antenna (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. Without the solar panels it would have had no power. The solar panels are needed to have ongoing communication with it.
Without power it's dead anyway.
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Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw? Placement of the antenna that did not depend on success of unfurling is a lesson learned.
Well, since that's going to charge the batteries all you'd get is a "hey here I am oh wait why are my batteries draining gotta go kthxbye", a little easier to debug I guess but pretty much just as catastrophic.
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Perhaps, or it could have been there for protection during the landing sequence.
And its likely that without the solar panels extended, there wasn't going to be much use of having the antenna available due to a rapidly depleting power source.
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"Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw?"
It doesn't look like. The antenna needs energy to work and the energy comes from the solar panels. Given such a dependency it doesn't seem wrong to make the antenna serviceable dependendant on the solar panels being deployed -with the nice side effect that the panels will somehow protect the antenna at landing.
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I was thinking the same thing, but if the panels don't deploy, it won't have enough power to talk for very long.
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Congratulations to Beagle 2 team (Score:1)
Congratulations on your near success.
Seriously - you did a lot better than some other much better funded probes did.
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News is too late for some. (Score:4, Informative)
Quick someone (Score:2)
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At least we know the Beagle has landed
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That command is "BEETHOVEN"
Mission 1.5 (Score:1)
This might be a good mission for the old wheeled vehicle with an arm. Go to this location, then attempt to unfurl the panels.
Design failure (Score:2)
Re:Design failure (Score:5, Interesting)
This provides more evidence supporting ground-based probes shoud be using nuclear power sources.
Nuclear power sources will need to be unfurled as well. They have to be some distance away from the more delicate electronics and sensors (especially anything trying to detect the sort of particles that the power source is generating!).
Spirit, Opportunity, Philae... when will we drop the nonsensical arguments about sending nuclear power sources to space?
How about the sensible arguments for not sending nuclear power sources? Like not having access to Plutonium 238? Solar power works as has been demonstrated multiple times on the surface of Mars with a fair number of successful projects.
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Is P-238 really the *only* option? Are there any other possibilities? How about get some people brainstorming and testing some alternate options? With all the recent research into batteries it seems some other possibilities may be possible.
Wow, poor Philae spent years traversing the solar system to do the impossible, only to go out in 90 minutes. And the Hugyns probe was similar. What a freaking waste of resources. Yes, something is better than nothing. But it is like loading up the car and traveling from F
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How about get some people brainstorming and testing some alternate options?
Yes. I gather cobalt 60 would work over the lifespan of the probe and it's almost off the shelf. As I understand it, the problem is that you need about four times the mass of RTG using cobalt 60 than you do with plutonium 238, And that makes cobalt 60 rather uncompetitive with solar panels.
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Gd148 is sexy as hell [nanomedicine.com], but isn't exactly available in the corner drugstore. I quote:
A ~0.2 kg block of pure Gd148 (~1 inch^3) initially yields ~120 watts, sufficient in theory to meet the complete basal power needs of an entire human body for ~1 century...
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It might yield a watt, but I would be astonished if you can convert more than 5% of that into electricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
Oh, here they say 5% - 8% efficiency ... but that is on larger scale than 1inch^3
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You assume RTG technology - I don't and I don't think the linked article does, either.
They discuss Energy Organs [nanomedicine.com] here, stating that (emphasis mine):
a sphere of Gd148 emitting ~100 watts with a 75-year half-life and measuring 3.41 cm in diameter with a 5-micron Pt shield glows at 1326 K (e-sub-r for Pt at 1326 K is 0.156; Gd melting point ~1585 K, Pt melting point ~2042 K); this is approximately the decomposition temperature of diamond (into graphite) and well above the combustion point for diamond in air (Section 6.5.3), so Pt-coated sapphire (sapphire melting point ~2310 K) may provide a more stable first wall for the radionuclide energy organ. Carnot thermal efficiency for a heat engine using this source could reach, at most, ~76%.
I'd say that's pretty good efficiency, and given the power levels and temperatures, I think non-RTG technologies should be used. If the system never drops below 0C, why not use a more conventional system?
Plus, you could just use the Gd148 to keep the craft warm and use other means to generate electrical power.
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The Carnot efficiency is only helpful if you actually have a device able to harvest that energy.
Otherwise it is just a meaningless number.
Carnots laws simply say the efficiency in an 'heat engine' depends on the temperature difference between the max and the min temperature.
So if you had a turbine made from material that can sustain the max temperatures you mention and is operating in an environment that has the low/min temperatures we see, then the maximum possible efficiency is the number you have.
As we d
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Why you link an article about hypothetical nano technology is bejond me :)
Because it's fascinating, and it mentions the extreme energy density of other 'safe' radionuclides besides Plutonium 238. That was the question that was asked in the parent post, after all. :-)
As for efficiency, I bet a closed-cycle Stirling Engine system [wikipedia.org] could work on Mars with Gd148 as the heat source and a radiative heat sink to space or the (almost non-existent) Mars atmosphere as the sink. Naturally you could parallel the Gd148
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The stirling engine needs to survive that temperature (the one of the heat source). That is the main problem.
In respect to a stirling engine, and the needed wattage we talk about two things: the engine and the generator. (After all the engine has to move the generator to produce the electric power).
Then we have to check how much heat we can radiate.
Because the temperature of the radiator will be the 'low temperature' of the Carnot efficiency calculation.
I mean: generating electric power and designing a syst
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Also, as 2,100 degrees C is considerably higher than the melting point of 1,410 degrees C of the silicon antenna used to communicate from Mars back to Earth, it is understandable why said antenna would need to be *inside* the heat shield rather
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Designing the antenna to be "hidden" by the 5 "leaves" is absurd.
No, it is not. Expecting an antenna to be useful without power is absurd
This provides more evidence supporting ground-based probes shoud be using nuclear power sources. Spirit, Opportunity, Philae... when will we drop the nonsensical arguments about sending nuclear power sources to space?
No, it does not. Solar is proven technology. And when a rocket fails to make it to space and explodes, it doesn't spread Plutonium all over Florida.
When will the nuke-nutters stop trying to bankrupt economies with nonsensical dreams of nuclear power being a panacea, when it is the most expensive power source that humans have ever conceived and accordingly has never been even remotely economically viable?
White dot directly above on the image (Score:2)
There's a white dot directly above the Beagle, I wonder if that's a snapped-off solar panel petal.
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No, it is K'Breel holding the Staff of Power that he won by stabbing the Evil Earthling Intruder before it could attack the hive.
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Perhaps it did hit the ground fairly hard, which caused it to unravel in a way that somewhat resembles the intended landing configuration.
Fixed? (Score:2)
Fixed? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would guess that the solar panels are supposed to charge the batteries. Batteries can fail pretty easily at very low temperatures, and a lot of spacecraft need energy to keep warm in addition to running the electronics. In all likelihood it has been without sufficient power long enough for the onboard "perishables" like batteries to be useless.
Fixed? (Score:2)
Two of the solar panels did unfurl and theoretically are producing power. Perhaps not enough to run all the instruments, but it's something and it's possible could be keeping the batteries charged.
Most of these probes, sensing loss of communication or other problem, go into a 'fault mode' where the bare minimum is kept going until instructions are received. The probe itself might be functional and alive, just with low power and unable to communicate with it's primary array.
I wonder if there is another way
Little probe, lonely on mars, seeks companionship (Score:5, Funny)
Little probe, lonely on mars, seeks companionship
Or maybe just someone to listen
Please respond
Maibox empty for 11 years now
Have you forgotten me?
Completely dead? (Score:2)
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As Coroner I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead,
she's really most sincerely dead.
Corrective Action? (Score:2)
Maybe NASA can go bump it with a rover a couple of times......you never know....always works on my B&W TV!
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No, no, this is delicate equipment. Unplug it, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in.
Knowing what failed is valuable (Score:2)
Knowing what failed is valuable. Now instead of engineers looking at rockets and/or parachutes, they can concentrate on the panel deployment system. Maybe they overlooked something and it was more easily fouled by dust than they thought.
Video of SpaceX booster crash (Score:1)
This is related to space, so I'm posting it: You can see a video of the crash of the Faclon here [slate.com]. Plus a couple of funny tweets by Elon Musk, such as when he calls the crash a "RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly)" - heh.
Fix it? (Score:1)
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