Slashdot Mirror
Construction Begins on Beagle 2
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."
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
Please tell me it doesn't use Lucas electrics.
This could go very wrong...
Cheers,
Ian
Read the article but I couldn't see how this will do a better job at finding life than previous probes sent to Mars?
We've looked for life since the Viking probes in the 70's and it wouldn't surprise me if they'll send yet another one after this to "check for life so we're really, *really* sure nothing is there before we send any actual humans".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
You know that if they do find life they'll blame it on "earthly contamination" no matter how clean it was so these clean room conditions don't do anything but waste time and money. Why not just let it sit in the corner of a nuclear waste site for a couple months and have that nuke off any germs.
Also space is so inhospitable what with all the radiation, lack of resources (such as air, water and nutrients), the burn-up during re-entry into the martian atmosphere etc... I think that if any life can make it to Mars we should be impressed and should study the phenomenon. And if we brought life to Mars and it flourished that would finally shut-up the "only-Earth can support life" people.
Who cares about contaminating Mars? Europeans contaminated the Americas with foreign animals and diseases etc... and the Americas reciprocated. But enough survived and we're all still here. The truth is every footstep you take affects the world around you by killing off blades of grass. We can't help this, we can simply do our best to create as much as we destroy and learn in the process.
Personally though, I would much rather see a sustained effort to colonize the moon before we spend months flying people to Mars to collect rocks.
You may think this is a troll - I suppose it is a little bit - but surely you must be able to see the absurdity in this. All along some Europeans - particularly the French, although there is much to admire about them themselves - have felt a profound jellously about America and in his case, the American Space program. A sensible approach would be to let the Americans spend the money, then when it becomes commercial feasible people in Europe will start running commercial services up their anyway: after all the Russians already are, if only into near orbit.
But no, the EU has to have its own space programme, even though it could never keep up with either the Russians or the Americans. I don't so much mind having to pay for it pointlessly - there are plenty of other things I get taxed for pointlessly. It's the pseudo-prestige they get from it, as though somehow they're playing with the big boys now.
The major thing about this mission that is new is that Beagle 2 contains an automated MassSpec. These things are normaly huge, and would have been imposable to get to mars at the time of Viking. But the Beagle 2 designers have worked on miniturizing and compacting one into the space and wieght available.
This is where the "Beagle 2 will look for life" is coming from. Viking told us general stuff, Rover gave us Geology, Beagle 2 will go for an indepth investigation of exactly what the soil in the area it lands is composed of.
That sounds all well and good - but what about non-organic contamination? What if a silicone boot on the lander's leg has an adverse reaction with/to Martian soil? How about the lander's alloy components? Emissions, anyone?
Not to sluff off the importance of this mission, but it's not hard to concede that the only definitive evaluation of "life on Mars" (past/present/future) would be a method to observe and detect phenomena non-obtrusively!
db
Cig:
ôô
Who's they? This is the first UK mission to Mars and we stick to metric in science. The main worry is the launch system, as the last European Mars mission to be launched by Russia didn't make it outside of our atmosphere. :(
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
Now I may be as thick as a whale omelet, BUT how will they transport it to the rocket and then launch it and ensure that everything else is clean room ? The Rocket will have to remain sterile inside, the transport to the rocket will have to be sterile.
Surely there is a risk of contamination at lots of these phases ? Especially shifting it from the lab, into transport and transport into rocket.
I'm sure they can do it to a high degree of probability, but how can they do it with even 99.999% certainty
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Its cheaper to launch a sat into space via ESA than NASA. There are other options out there that are cheaper than ESA but insurance isn't too bad now that there have been successful launches since the coding f*ck up.
So it isn't just "oh look we have to do it" its more "shit they charge through the nose for this stuff, we need a cheaper way".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As the earth have been hit by asteroids originating from Mars, it makes sense to believe that pieces of Earth have found its way to Mars, right? Question is, how long is the average time for such debris to hit another planet, and can life survive, first of all the impact on our planet that caused the rocks to fly into space, secondly the long long travel in space before it hits Mars and thirdly, the impact on Mars?
So about Beagle 2, can Earth organisms survive several months in vacuum, high radiation and extremely low temperature for months?
Will work for bandwidth
Yes they can, as was demonstrated very convincing a while back when chunks of a Surveyor craft were returned from the moon by an Apollo crew. They were covered in microorganisms which had survived lunar conditions.
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
An ordinary Mass Spec need not be assembled in clean room conditions - it may be industry practice anyway. It wouldn't hurt to do so, and if you were prepared to announce the discovery of martian life, I'd certainly keep the internal components as clean as possible to avert any accusations of contamination. However, for most Mass Spec this is not necesarry - the weekend before last we disassembled a Mass Spec, put it back together again - we washed the exterior surface of the rods with isopropyl alchohol, since they needed cleaning, and we avoided getting fingerprints on anything, but otherwise we just put whatever components we were disassembling down on the (fairly dirty, actually) lab bench, and now it works fine.
My experience is entirely with GC (gas chromatograph) Mass Spec, but basically, in order for something to show up in your detector, it has to be vaporised. Gunk and dead cells that accrue, even on the internal surfaces, of the Mass Spec components can alter some component's magnetic properties (which must be exquisitely precise) but, generally, don't get vaporised, have no net charge and can't be pulled to the detector.
Of course, if you're sifting the soil for every known biological molecule, and thus trying every possible charge/mass ratio, the risk that some contaminant WILL spontaneously vaporise (especially after whatever radioactive abuse it encountered during space travel, and presumably cooking up to a fair temperature on re-entry) is, I suppose, considerable.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Firstly is wasn't collected from mars, the rock fell to earth and is believed to be from mars..
Secondly, it didn't contain bacteria, but what is claimed to be fossilised evidence of bacteria.
Thirdly, the evidence is merely suggestive, but far from incontravertable, of alien life.
A sensible approach would be to let the Americans spend the money, then when it becomes commercial feasible people in Europe will start running commercial services up their anyway
So you've never heard of Arianespace then? Arianespace has over 50% of the world's commercial launch market. That sounds kinda commercially feasible to me.
And the reason? Simple. The Ariane rockets get satellites into space faster, with less hassle, and more reliably than anyone else. Which means that when you add up the total costs, Ariane also gets them into orbit cheaper than anyone else (although the Russians are competitive, and currently have a less-full launch schedule, which is why the Beagle 2 is scheduled to launch on a Russian rocket). The US doesn't even come close, mostly due to reliance on the horrendously-expensive Shuttle and the resulting negative impact that has had on the Atlas and Delta launch programmes.
The EU is up with the best in terms of unmanned space vehicle technlogy too - as an example, the Huygens lander that is part of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan was developed and built in the UK, and in 2000, Europe finally supplied over 50% of the world's geostationary communication satellites.
NASA and the rest of the US space industry has talked for some years about doing it 'faster, cheaper, better' but right now, the Europeans are walking the walk rather than talking the talk and are reaping the benefits.
However, outside the space industry itself the European space programme has an image problem - as demonstrated by your post, even Europeans have no idea how well the European space industry is doing. This, in turn, has a negative impact on future sales of satellites and launch services. What it needs is good PR, and the best way of doing that is by headline-grabbing space science programmes, and Beagle 2 is a good example. Think of it as a long-term marketing investment by European governments. What is spent now on space science projects will, if the mission is successful, repay itself many times in the future in terms of sales of satellites and launch services and the tax revenues that are derived from that, not to mention the effect it has on overall national prestige and worldwide perception as leaders in technology, which has other spinoff benefits.
The Americans and Russians have understood this for decades, which is why there has been continued investment in space science programmes of limited immediate economic benefit in these countries, and why you have this distorted view of the world in which American and Russian space technology is far superior to everyone else's.
Just because you are unable to see short-term economic benefit does not mean that such economic benefit will not happen later and perhaps indirectly: all it shows it that you are blinkered by short-termism. Sadly, such views are common and are in some ways the biggest blight on the Western way of life, but I'll save that for another rant.
> Er, because when you take into account the many billions of taxpayers
> money Airbus has had for free, Boings work out as much cheaper?
This is such a tired argument, it should have been buried long, long, long ago. Boeing would be nowhere today without the juicy government contracts of WWII. The 747 (in 1969) was the first major new development at Boeing, most previous airliners being based on variations of the B-17 and B-29. Let's not even talk about their new military contracts since they've become THE aircraft company of the USA, or their NASA contracts. You want an aircraft manufacturer that tax money built? Boeing has Airbus beat anyday.
Beagle 2 is a UK lander. The UK government (through PPARC) funds the instrument with additional cash coming from private donations/sponsorship. It was built in the UK by a team from the UK with some contributions from overseas.
Mars Express is an ESA mission consisting of a Mars orbiter.
Beagle 2 will piggy-back on Mars Express, and use it as a data relay so, yes, it would be impossible without ESA. But, for that matter, the mission also uses NASA's deep space network for receiving data so it would also be impossible (at present) without NASA> However, the lander itself is from the UK.
-Karl
> France alone is responsible for roughly half the ESA budget.
e sa.htm
a l00/C1Fina n.pdf
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_
ESA figures:
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/annu
Roughly half? Hmm...
This is only one way, and may not be the way they choose, but it'd work. First, build the probe in sterile conditions (they got that part). Next, encase it in an airtight package. Then transport and mount the package. Hit it with X-rays at the mount points (if you design the package correctly you can do that without compromising the payload). After launch, before the boost to take it to interplanetary trajectory, jettison the package shell, leaving just the booster (that you can dump before orbital insertion at Mars) and the payload/deorbit engines, which were encased in the package and so are germ-free.
Virg
Yeah but bloody good to hear an opinion from somebody who actually knows about the subject, you got to admit. More signal less noise!
(err... guess I am in the latter category, but good posting Karl!)
Since we're talking figures, I did some quick digging to compare to NASA. NASA's FY2000 budget was $13,578.4 million, which was about 2 times the ESA EUR7,066M budget for the same year. After some quick math, France and Germany contributed EUR1,862.5M and EUR1,726.3M (26.4% and 24.4%) respectively of the total ESA budget. This makes their total space spending about 14% and 13% respectively of US spending. These calculations were made without first converting the FY2000 EUR7,066M ESA budget to dollars (or vice versa), assuming a very rough 1:1 equivalence, so actual figures will be off a bit.
> That sounds all well and good - but what about non-organic contamination?
This is a lot easier to detect and compensate for, since the reactions involved are only chemical in nature.
> What if a silicone boot on the lander's leg has an adverse reaction with/to Martian soil? How about the lander's alloy components? Emissions, anyone?
These things would actually be good for science, and the mission. The goal is not to avoid any contamination of the Red Planet (if it was, we'd have to find a way to get back all of the ships we've already sent!) but to avoid biological contamination, since that's more unpredictable and can also compromise any search for Martian life. However, if a silicone boot reacts with Martian soil, that would be scientifically significant, since it would indicate that there's some chemical (or other) reason for it to happen, despite our not expecting it, which would in turn point to some compound or process on Mars we've never encountered on Earth. The same goes for alloy components and engine exhaust, since if there's something in the Martian atrmosphere that affects aluminum struts in an unexpected way, we'd want to know what that something is, both for any future Mars missions and for possible use on Earth.
> Not to sluff off the importance of this mission, but it's not hard to concede that the only definitive evaluation of "life on Mars" (past/present/future) would be a method to observe and detect phenomena non-obtrusively!
From a biological standpoint, this mission is specifically being designed and built to be non-obtrusive, which is why it's being planned and built to minimize the possibility of Earthly contamination. A lump of sterile metal and plastic is not likely to have any effect on Martian biological organisms, other than the joking reference I saw in a comic book where life had just formed on Mars, and the creature raised its appendage for the first time, only to have a Terran probe with "Search for Martian Life" painted on the side land on it and squash it.
Virg
> So about Beagle 2, can Earth organisms survive several months in vacuum, high radiation and extremely low temperature for months?
In a word, yes. Microbes (and bigger stuff) have survived in hard vacuum space for long times (the mold growing on the outside of Mir and stuff (from Earth) found contaminating parts brought back from Moon missions are two examples).
> As the earth have been hit by asteroids originating from Mars, it makes sense to believe that pieces of Earth have found its way to Mars, right?
While it's possible, it's not very likely. First, Earth has a much denser atmosphere, which has two dampening effects. First, less stuff gets to impact on the surface, since stuff that would penetrate to the surface of Mars would get eaten by friction on the way to Earth. Even when something gets to the ground, the ejected material has to plow its way back up through that same thicker, higher-air-drag atmosphere to get away, which means the same impact is less likely to send off ejecta with sufficient force to clear the atmosphere. Then, of course, there's the fact that Earth is bigger, so even without the atmosphere, it takes more to break free of the gravity well, so stuff that's just sufficient to get clear of Mars and come visit us would not be able to get free of us for the trip to Mars.
> Question is, how long is the average time for such debris to hit another planet, and can life survive, first of all the impact on our planet that caused the rocks to fly into space, secondly the long long travel in space before it hits Mars and thirdly, the impact on Mars?
If such an event were to happen, it's again possible but not likely for life to survive, since the life that made the trip would have to be hardy enough to survive extremely high and extremely low temperatures and be anaerobic. Such organisms do exist, however, so there's no ruling it out. As to time frames, under the best circumstances (distance between planets and impact points as small as possible and optimal factors for weather and such) the trip would still be measured in years, possibly decades and very likely centuries.
Virg
> They are hardly "THE" contractor for military aircraft in the USA.
I didn't say that, I said they're THE aircraft company in general (not WRT military contracts), since there are no more (large) civil manufacturers left beside them. Besides, fighter planes are hardly the only aircraft expenditure of the military, and Boeing is only standing to gain from future transport orders.