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Fingers Crossed for Beagle
Adam_Trask writes "Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers. Beagle 2 has been carried to the vicinity of Mars by the Mars Express mothership, and released successfully to go its own way for the final leg of the journey."
Perhaps the best science book I've ever read is A Traveler's Guide to Mars. This book is full of the latest imagery from various mapping missions, and the author (well known planetary scientist William K. Hartmann) tells you, in clear enjoyable prose, basically everything we know about Mars and how it has been figured out. It turns out that Mars is way more interesting (and wet) than you probably expect. If you plan on following the Beagle 2 mission and the two NASA rovers that follow next month, then this is the book to have.
G.
That would be 'Leicester, the Beagle has landed' - the whole thing is being controlled from the National Space Centre in Leicester, where you can actually go and watch the control centre in action.
Although actually it's going to announce itself by playing a tune by Blur, as well as using a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the cameras.
"Information wants to be paid"
In terms of expectations/cost factor the Beagle/Mars Express is perhaps the most ambitious one, therefore the high emphasis on what could go wrong in the Beeb article. A kind of be hopeful but keep your fingers crossed thingy.
Well, half right. It's named after the Beagle, which is the ship on which Charles Darwin was the naturalist, which visited (among other places) the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin formulated much of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
But Snoopy already went to space!
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
How the H.M.S. Beagle got Her Name
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
Aurora roadmap:
More information: ESA or Spacedaily.
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Timothy approved a much more informative summary article Yesterday, in the Science section, here, detailing all the issues encountered before landing.
They didn't use the Ariane 4 software by accident. They intentionally re-used the software (presumably with some constants changed) and tried to save money by omitting thorough re-testing.
See section 2.1 of the report on the Ariane 5 failure for a full explanation of how it happened.
You are both almost right :-)
The National Space Science Centre, Leicester, UK hosts the Lander Operations Control Centre (LOCC). The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK hosts the Lander Operations Planning Centre (LOPC). And Darmstadt, Germany is the location of the Mars Express Mission Control, which handles the spacecraft which was carrying Beagle 2 until a few days ago, and which will be used (along with NASA's Mars Odyssey) to communicate with the lander.
More info from sunny Leicester. (Actually, it's raining here right now.)
I've never visited the NSSC, although I only live about 2 miles away from it. (It looks like a giant condom.) Sounds like Christmas would be a good time to get over there.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Ah... ironically, in Britain, American cars have the reputation of doing about ten miles to the gallon and belching out pollution as if global warming was a left-wing conspiracy ;-)