A Spot For Beagle On Mars

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."

Comments

Re:And why is it called "Beagle"?

[deglr6328]

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".

Re:We didn't go to the moon, we've never been to m

[davidmb]

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.

Trivia

[harmonica]

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 ;-)

Re:Why don't the explore the face??

[Kotetsu]

The "face" is a rather uninteresting area. Here's a link to photographs of it taken with the Mars Global Surveyor 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

[Chuck Flynn]

Join the Mars Society. Philip Dembo, 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 and buy something -- 5% of proceeds go towards helping conquer Mars.

I hear...

[segfault7375]

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

And why is it called "Beagle"?

[TekPolitik]

The Beagle has landed.

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

The science

[bcrowell]

Information about the science the probe will do is at this site.

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 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.

I would hope

[OmegaDan]

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 :)

Another desert?

[Ektanoor]

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...

Dumb joke of the night

[Fervent]

Does the smiley face come up if they win?

Put two and two together...

[Wire Tap]

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*

at least

[bluelip]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

The landing site for the ship was, in fact, determined by a game of minesweeper.

Quite patriotic

[Chuck Flynn]

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.

Looks Promising

[Alien54]

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

;-)

Well if you ask me...

[RJ11]

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

[PsionicMan]

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.

Maybe I'm missing something...

[Microsift]

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