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

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.

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.