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Construction Begins on Beagle 2

Posted by timothy on from the planetary-galapagos dept.

Bonker writes "CNN reports that Beagle 2, a lander that's part of ESA's next Mars mission, is beginning construction in England. The lander will be constructed in clean-room conditions to avoid being contaminated with any kind of terrestrial life so that it can more accurately determine if there is or was any kind of martian life once it arrives."

3 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Website by corleth · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just wanted to put in a quick advert for the Beagle 2 website at http://www.beagle2.com/. Many of your questions can be answered there.

    -Karl

    Dr Karl Mitchell
    Planetary Science Research Group
    Environmental Science Dept.
    Lancaster University, UK

  2. Re:Its hard to know what to say. by Soft · · Score: 3, Informative
    Research and science receive only a very small part of our national budget. Looking at our national (Dutch) budget and the EU one, I can easily point out loads of stupid and/or wasteful things we are spending tax Euro's on, Euro's that would be much better spent on scientific research.

    I fully agree with this. The original poster (excluding a troll) may be mistaking this mission with the whole man-in-space mumbo-jumbo (I'm all for colonizing space, but not the ISS-billion-government-dollar way). However:

    do what you are good at, and buy what others are better at. Rather than design their own rocket to get something into space (like the Ariadne), Europe could just use existing and superior Russian Proton rockets or even a Shuttle. The money saved can go towards research in areas that we excel in (don't ask me which those areas are).

    We excel in rocket science. Serious. The Ariane 5 can launch 6 tons in GTO, and the next version due this fall can do 8. Proton cannot do that AFAIK and using the horrendously exepnsive Shuttle to save money would be ludicrous at best. The next Atlas 5 and Delta 4 will match this kind of performance and are possibly easier to scale up, but are not there yet.

  3. French illusions by uradu · · Score: 3, Informative

    > France alone is responsible for roughly half the ESA budget.

    Ok, let's kill this particular French wet dream in the bud. It might make for a great sheep-counting alternative at night, but is far from based on reality.

    CNES figures on a horrible chart:
    http://www.cnes.fr/cnes/moyens/en/budget_e sa.htm

    ESA figures:
    http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/annua l00/C1Fina n.pdf

    Roughly half? Hmm...