[extropy-chat] Beagle 2 located

[Damien Broderick]

Source: CNN News

<http://tinyurl.com/a8at4>http://tinyurl.com/a8at4

Tuesday, December 20, 2005


Beagle 2 Probe 'Found' On Mars

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The British scientist behind the
lost 2003 Beagle 2 mission to Mars said on Tuesday the craft may
have been spotted in NASA pictures which indicate the project
very nearly worked.

Beagle 2, named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed in when he
formulated his theory of evolution, was built by British
scientists for about 50 million pounds ($90 million) and taken
to Mars aboard the European Space Agency's orbiter Mars Express.

It was due to land in a crater on the red planet in a bouncing
ball of airbags and begin looking for signs of life on Christmas
Day, 2003. But it lost contact with Earth once it separated from
the mother ship in mid-December.

Colin Pillinger told the BBC he thought the craft may have hit
the ground too hard, damaging its instruments, because the
atmosphere was thinner than usual due to dust storms.

Pictures taken by NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor
spacecraft may contain clues about Beagle's final seconds.

"There is a lot of disturbance in this crater, particularly a
big patch on the north crater wall which we think is the primary
impact site," Pillinger said.

"There are then other features around the crater consistent with
the airbags bouncing around and finally falling down into the
middle. Then, when you cut the lace, the airbags fall apart
giving three very symmetrical triangles."

Four roughly circular features to the right of the 'airbag'
markings could be Beagle's unfolded solar panels, he said.

Pillinger said the findings, if correct, showed the project came
very close to working but had failed because it had landed in a
"sideways motion" instead of a "horizontal mode."

"That may have damaged the lander so the lid didn't open
properly and didn't release the antennae, so we couldn't get the
signal," he said.

The European Space Agency and British government, which jointly
commissioned an inquiry into what went wrong, said in May 2004
that no one was to blame for the mission's failure.