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Beagle 2 Probe Lands; No Signal Received Yet
securitas writes "The BBC reports that Europe's Beagle 2 Mars lander has failed to broadcast its landing confirmation signal. While project leaders are trying to put a brave face on it, the failure is seen as a major setback. The Beagle is out of broadcast range but another contact attempt will be made later today, when they hope a signal will be detected. Another failed Mars mission will solidify Mars' reputation as a spacecraft graveyard. More at icWales and News24."
Cool Britannia ?
Yes, right, now back to earth. Looks like we did not even test the radio link.
Sigh
Maybe I listen to Art Bell too much, but it seems pretty strange that so many probes to Mars have failed in some fashion. Perhaps the Martians don't want us messing up their planet?
*Watched too many x-files*
Back to reality:
Or maybe Mars is a long way away and it's really hard to build a machine that can be expected to work for months on end whilst being baked and simultaneously frozen after being placed in a vacuum and bombarded with radiation. Then to put this complicated device on top of hundreds of tonnes of high explosive so that you can get it moving fifteen times faster than a rifle bullet with the objective of placing it somewhere near a body only slightly larger than the Moon?
There is no god
The Martians destroyed the Beagle 2. They don't want us f-ing up Mars the way we've f-ed up Earth. Don't blame 'em really.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Spacecraft graveyard?
You'd think we'd get the message already: GO AWAY.
Looks like Mars didn't like its gift this Season.
Not much information is available on the net about more details on the landing. I guess the current Mars satellites don't have enough resolution for them to photograph the expected landing site
It's like space probes are from Venus and Mars is from.. umm..
nm.
We see thanks to them how far from safe manned flight we are. Once we perfect unmanned missions, we can try to go there ourselfes.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Happy solstice and present-exchange day.
the failure is seen as a major setback
It could be the greatest discovery of all time instead, actually : the discovery of life on the planet Mars.
I mean, think about it, if you lived there and were regularly showered by huge retro-rockety or bouncy things from the monkeys on the planet next door, wouldn't you tear the probes apart with rage ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
We still have the Jodrell Bank telescope, and in January the US probes to come to rescue, if all else fails.
But really? What is there that is killing the probes? A previously unknown radiation belt? Some unknown properties of Mars? Global conspiracy to cover up the interesting findings? Ancient Martian defence systems?
The EU was using the metric system and the Martians are on the English system. Ft. lbs. != Newton meters.
*rolls eyes*
From the bbc article... Despite more than 30 missions launched to the Red Planet since the 1960s, only three landers have ever reached the Martian surface successfully. Maybe instead of sending loads of cheap probes we should all pool our cash and build a really expensive one...
Unlike many other news organizations (in the UK and around the world), BBC prides itself in unbiased reporting (as opposed to patriotic reporting with one eye closed). Just look at the David Kelly episode.
This is more related to SETI and extraterrestrial life, but please read on...
We are, simply put, the FIRST ONES. We are the FIRST race to achieve intelligence and space travel. We are the race which those after us will call with the name: "The Ancients".
That's my favorite theory. Until proven otherwise, I wish we'd live up to that theory, by showing a good example for those who come after us.
...A Martian parent whose christmas shopping was running late manages to get "a great deal" on an expensive Earth-made toy for his/her child...
The Beagle has landed!
Beagle lost ? Looks like GNOME crashed.
Reuters isn't the only one jumping the gun. Yahoo is headlining this story as "lost in space".
It's premature to call the failure to hear the initial signal as a "major setback". For Reuters to do so without attributed that assessment to anyone is sloopy journalism. Why would anyone care what Reuters thinks?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Major Mars missions, 1964 to 2004:
1964 U.S. launches Mariner 3, which fails after liftoff.
1964 U.S. launches Mariner 4. First successful Mars fly-by in July 1965. The craft returns the first pictures of the Martian surface.
1964 Soviets launch Zond 2. Mars fly-by. Contact lost in May 1965.
1969 U.S. launches Mariner 6 and 7. The two spacecraft fly by Mars in July and August 1969 and send back images and data.
1971 Soviets launch Mars 2. Orbiter and lander reach Mars in November 1971. Lander crashes but orbiter sends back images and data.
1971 U.S. launches Mariner 8, which fails during liftoff.
1971 U.S. launches Mariner 9. Orbiter reaches Mars in November 1971, provides global mapping of Martian surface and studies atmosphere.
1973 Soviets launch Mars 5. Orbiter reaches Mars in February 1974 and collects data.
1975 U.S. launches Viking 1 and Viking 2. The two orbiter/lander sets reach Mars in 1976. Orbiters image Martian surface. Landers send back images and take surface samples.
1992 U.S. launches Mars Observer. Contact lost with orbiter in August 1993, three days before scheduled insertion into Martian orbit.
1996 U.S. launches Mars Global Surveyor. Orbiter reaches Mars in September 1997 and maps the planet. Still in operation.
1996 Soviets launch Mars 96, which fails after launch and falls back into Earth's atmosphere.
1996 U.S. launches Mars Pathfinder. Lander and rover arrive on Mars in July 1997, in the most-watched space event ever. Lander sends back thousands of images, and Sojourner rover roams the surface, sending back 550 images.
1998 Japan launches Nozomi. Orbiter suffers glitch in December 1998, forcing circuitous course correction. Mission fails in 2003.
1998 U.S. launches Mars Climate Orbiter. Spacecraft destroyed while entering Martian orbit in September 1999.
1999 U.S. launches Mars Polar Lander. Contact lost with lander during descent in December 1999. Two microprobes "hitchhiking" on lander also fail.
2001 U.S. launches Mars Odyssey. Orbiter reaches Mars in October 2001 to detect water and shallow buried ice and study the environment. It can also act as a communications relay for future Mars landers.
2003 European Space Agency launches Mars Express. Orbiter and lander to arrive at Mars in December 2003.
2003 U.S. launches Mars Expedition Rovers. Spirit and Opportunity rovers due to land on Mars in January 2004.
It was on the front page of http://news.bbc.co.uk/ but is not now.
It seems to have been pushed off the front page into the science/nature page by explosions in Pakistan and China. The UK has historic links with India/Pakistan (and a number of UK'ians have family links in Paikistan) so this was perhaps deemed more pressing. I know the Beagle probe means more to you and me, but not everyone is a nerd.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
There are already 2 functional spacecrafts - Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey in orbit. And Mars Express, Spirit, and Opportunity will be arriving soon.
Surely 5 spacecrafts will be able to pick any signal the Beagle may be broadcasting, or otherwise find signs of the wrecks.
Ironically my pc was playing Joy to the World when I read this... the downside of scheduling this kind of things around this time. WinAmp was promptly shut down.
Because the vast majority of probes sent anywhere from Earth have gone there. Beagle was on a tight shoestring anyway, so I'm not surprised that one bit the orange dust.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
because their country uses metric units!
* The Soviet Union used metric units, and all of their probes failed except one. So did the '96 Russian mission.
* The Customary-using U.S.'s Mariner 4, 6, 7, and 9 worked, as did Viking 1 and 2, and Mars Observer; only Mariner 3 of the Mars missions failed.
* The U.S. Federal Government most far-reaching metrification laws went into effect after Observer was launched, and things have been 50-50 since, reflecting the semi-converted state of the U.S.
Obviously, there is a direct correlation between societal use of metric units and failure of Mars missions! If we are to explore the Red Planet, we must de-metrify now!
michael, not to nitpick on the slightly altered headline, but the "Beagle 2 Probe Lands" is little inaccurate. They just don't know if it landed - that's why they are hoping to receve the landing confirmation signal.
From the article:
Well, I suppose that could be considered a landing of sorts. :)
And, find out here what options they have to communicate with beagle
But by 6:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m. EST) the rocket passed out of the potential signal range without hearing anything.
The orbiters are slightly more advanced than a mere rocket. I wish the press would stop dumbing things down, I would think the majority of their audience graduated grade school.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
The chances of Odyssey recieving Beagle 2's signal were pretty small! The antennae had to have been facing the right direction when Odyssey passed over, it had to have unfolded completely when Odyssey passed over, and it had to be within the landing zone when Odyssey passed over! Beagle 2 could have missed any of these criteria but still be quite fine (I think it's likely that she survived).
/. when it's all over the fucking news!
Really, the odds weren't that great of Odyssey picking anything up. Now can't we just wait until Mars and Earth align up just right so we can point our powerful antennae at 'em and see for sure? Hell, Mars Express isn't even gonig to be able to talk to Beagle until Jan. 5th due to orbit adjustments. People need to stop being so ractionary.
I think Beagle 2 is alive. I'll link this comment if this does become the case on the repost today by
Well my new DVD player is broken too! Guess we'll be both in line at Best Buy tomorrow!
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Beagle 2's official site.
Space.com's Mars Rover section.
European Space Agency's Mars Express website.
If anyone here has problems viewing the videos ats /
http://esa.capcave.com/esa/marsexpress/
go download the latest Real codec from here
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codec
and use Xine to play them back.
Did i mention that RealOne/linux is a POS?
Long ago and far away, while I was in college full time (Cal Poly Pomona) I payed for it by working full time swing shift at the Perkin Elmer plant in Pomona, California. As an environmental test technician, I got to see designed and built the mass spectrometer which was used in the Viking Landers, which successfully landed on Mars, and which worked when they arrived.
The thing which stands out about these old birds (this was the mid-1970s, mind you) is that they were very rugged, and very simple electronically, by our standards. Most of the electronics were analog, and the electronic technologies used were huge, robust, massive pieces of silicon - by today's standards. The components were all tested beyond all reason, the modules were tested just as hard, and the final assemblies were tested more so. It cost a fortune - but it did work when it got there.
Mars is a hard target. We know that now, and it has become apparent that the statistics speak against getting there on the cheap.
Faster, better, cheaper - which two did you want?
Soli Deo Gloria
Of course we could make a serious effort. First put a string of sattelites around mars so that we actually know what is going on there 24/7 and don't have to have blackouts in the communication. Then send some heavy probes the size of those russian capsules. You know the ones that routinly land safely on solid ground with fragile humans inside? No messing about with little parachutes and bouncing. Make it big make it heavy make it a bloody tank.
And put a bloody nuclear reactor inside. Small ones are safe and stop you having to rely on the weather on some distant planet to power your solar panels. Why settle for a probe that can only survive weeks if your lucky when you can have a tank roaming the surface for years in any weather.
But no we waste effort on peanut operations like this. Why? Ego. Oh well nice try. Better luck next time.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's a bit early to write the probe off. We'll see.
/., there were some budget and time constraints and funding did not sound as strong as it should have been for a mission this complex.
However, as written up on the BBC and previsouly discussed on
Faster, Better, Cheaper -- Pick Two.
Just because NASA claimed they could do all three in the 1990's (promptly losing a Mars Mission), doesn't mean it's true.
If Beagle 2 turns out to be a fialure, I think Faster and Cheaper will turn out to be culprits.
Even Apollo 11 had problems landing that were not foreseen (priority inversion causing the lander's computer to be overloaded). It took flying by hand (also to avoid a ground hazard) to get the thing down.
If people can get past the hazards of interplanetery space (think of soemthing with lots of fairly dense hydrogen to act as a shield), the people would be more adaptable to failures like microswitches falsely triggering or whatever.
I have been unable to get top BBC news since yesterday - "connection refused". Is anyone else experiencing the same? BBC itself is fine, just the news site.
./'ed! :-)
Surely not
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Everyone seems to think that Beagle is lost.
However, they weren't necessarily expecting a signal today. publically they say they aren't that worried -perhaps it needs more time to unpack itself... because of its low power capacity, it can only do one thing at a time.
However, it nothing has been recieved tomorrow - boxing day - then hopes start to fade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3347055.stm
all these bad jokes about martians etc... yawn Remember, people, the first contact through Odyssey was considered a bit of a long shot... it should have been successful but it wasn't a sure thing. there are 6 more communications attempts programmed into Beagle 2, and Mars Express (the orbiter) was successful. the next communications attempt is in a bit under 7 hours. it's VERY possible that Beagle 2 is just at a funny angle or still charging from the solar panels in order to communicate. Let's not jump straight to 'major failure' etc.
It prolly got hit by a car.
damn those martians and their space cars.
"female engineers" is that an oxymoron or what?
Pardon we while I dissent with the group claiming that this failure (if it indeed it gets confirmed to be a failure) is one that is part and parcel of a complex engineering endeavour. From one of the links in an earlier /. story :
The consequence of such a failure? Loss of spacecraft. Workaround? None mentioned. How can one trust the weather on Mars when the weather on earth isnt that predictable either? More stuff :
Consequence of this problem : loss of spacecraft. Workaround : none mentioned.
I come from the software world, and we call this as shipping with severity 1 defects. That is - there exists a defect in a product that can compromise its mission and there exists no work around for the defect. If you spend x dollars on a widget and a sev 1 defect is triggered, your $x is gone to that mystical money bucket in the sky.
I'm not assigning blame to any one particular group - they all contributed. Undoubtedly, sev 1 problems could have been addressed had a bigger budget been available. So in that sense, it is a problem that originated in the funding and management channels. On the other hand, the engineers who ship with sev 1 defects also have a responsibility to make sure that the funders understand that the existence of sev 1 defects can lead to a total waste of time and money. It might even have been better to not make the attempt.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Oh where, oh where, has my little dog gone... oh where, oh where can he be...?
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Folks,
I think what may have happened to Beagle 2 was that it may have been damaged by the dust storms that are occurring on the planet right now.
Does anyone remember the Mars 3 probe the Soviets launched in the early 1970's? It had the unfortunate experience of trying to put a lander on Mars in a completely automated manner right in the middle of one of the worst planet-wide dust storms to hit the planet and the probe never functioned properly after landing. We were very fortunate that the two Viking landers and Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars during periods of benign weather on the planet.
Because these dust storms can last for three to five months, I do have major concerns that the two upcoming NASA landers may suffer the same fate as Beagle 2--trying to land in a major dust storm. =(
(By the way, one of reasons why the two Viking landers succeeded was that they stay attached to the Viking orbiter until after orbit insertion. That allowed NASA engineers to carefully look at landing sites with the orbiter cameras to find a safe landing spot. If Mars Express had been designed this way they probably would have not allowed Beagle 2 to land until the dust storms on the planet subsided.)
and put 120mm cannon on it while you are at it. Just in case.
Maybe now all you fools who were so gleefully chanting that Europe was leading the space race (with a single probe, forgetting Phobos, and forgetting the half-dozen US probes that have actually hit the dirt and sent radio signals back) will have a little perspective now. The space race isn't about whose nation gets there first, or who is in the lead, because it's all about humanity. And guess what - failure is not an option, but it is an eventuality.
NASA Engineers apparently forgot to insert batteries into a 3rd party radio transmitter even thought the radio had a "batteries not included" sticker... oh well....
I'm assuming the Beagle2 made it to the surface but was unlucky in where it landed. If the Beagle had landed at an akward angle, unable to open it's solar array- wouldn't the Martian wind eventually move it around? It only weighs 160 pounds or so, and the avg winds on Mars is about 20mph but gets up to 60 often and in the 100's during storms. I'm sure a fail-safe was included in the plan in the event the Lander couldn't open-RIGHT?? Are the batteries required to open the panels.. or do they spring? If they spring open the mission can be started then! On another note ... I bet NASA is considering changing the landing position of one of the US rovers to rendezvous with the Beagle2. That would be awesome! Don't give up!
The body of the article says "Beagle 2 Mars lander has failed to broadcast its landing confirmation signal", but it should more correctly read that the "Beagle 2 Mars lander landing confirmation signal has not been received". They have no way to know at this point if it was broadcast or not - they simply did not pick it up when expected using a piece of equipment they aren't certain would pick it up anyways.
Jodrell Bank (I believe Britain's largest radio telescope) should be able to pick it up if it is out there when it gets pointed at it (2200GMT).
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
fail to welcome their Earthly overlords.
I must have watched the documentaries about the development of Beagle many times over - the Open University kept repeating them late night/early morning on BBC 2. Although the Beagle team may be claiming that things could work out O.K. Colin Pillinger sounded rather depressed and downbeat. He certainly never looked this upset during the problems with funding and development.
Martians were playing more realistic version of 'Space Invaders'.
What would Jared do?
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
A computer glitch after landing has affected the timing for switching on the transmitter.
That's what you get when you use what Micro$oft calls software!
I think the mission didn't fail.
It might not be 100% successfull, but the ESA did a great job on it's first attempt to explore mars. Remember that this was a low-cost mission.
Maybe they had problems converting from metric to inches?
realkiwi
The failure of most of the recent Mars landers is espcially strange when you consider that two of the three successful landings, Viking 1 and Viking 2, were built with 1960s technology. (Yes, they landed in 1976, but the latest kit takes years to become space-qualified.)
You'd think that spacecraft designed with 1990s tech would be more reliable than the Vikings.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
... and nothing has been heard? Honestly, who in their right minds would have key communication for their project lie with the agency (NASA) that stands to be most embarassed by any Beagle success? You can bet China will not entrust anything important to NASA.
... assuming they don't get jammed.
The one hope is that Jodrell picks up something
Love a good conspiracy.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Amazingly enough, Google gives me 11,800 pages for Theroy .
But "the Roy" gets me 66,100, and the first is a great artist with a really lousy web site.
"Art Bell" returns only 56,600.
Could take a while to read them all, theroetically.
This Like That - fun with words!
We're talking about this probe. What did you expect?
I have worked in some fields of science and the tech industry, too, it's like Dilbert in many ways, and I don't see why jerks like that shouldn't build our space probes, too.
Just think of the Ariane 5 maiden flight failure that cost a billion bucks or so and how you'd have to be a complete jerk to fuck up the thing the way they did, I'll dig out the story if someone is interested.
It's maybe a general trend these days with big project, may it be a space probe or a big software project in the private sector.
Tech projects on this magniture simply require a lot of vision and character to place the bigger goal before your primal instincts, i.e. not to turn it into a game of who has the bigger dick each day, and most people just aren't up to it.
I just read the article about the ITER fusion reactor and thought how'd that be a cool job working there saving the world etc., but then I imagined some stuck-up moron as a boss telling me to install an SQL database in mauve and thought hell no.
This comment is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Two things:
1) The delta-V to get to Venus is much less than to go to Mars. Results is less acceleration load on the probes, also Venus has a much denser atmosphere so that aerodynamic drag devices (drogue chutes, main chutes) are much more effective in controlling touchdown velocity.
2) The thermal cycle of daily heating/cooling is less extreme on Venus than on Mars. Yes, you do have pressure to worry about on Venus... but the thermal cycle is what beats the hell out of electrical connections.
(Note that two of the three successful Mars landers used retrorockets (Viking I & Viking II)... so Beagle was really treadding a very recently blazed trail by using Pathfinder's airbag landing.)
--Rob
(NT)
The Odyssey spacecraft is not their only relay. Early januari the European Mars Express orbiter comes online, which can be used as a backup relay (if Beagle2 has survived the landing). The best source of current information I have seen is the webcast of the press conference from this morning, which can be found on the official beagle2 site (I'm not providing a direct link to the streams, because slashdotting their server wouldn't be very nice at this moment, they have enough to worry about)
... would have WELCOMED our new Earthling masters.
2 dashes and a space, or just 2 dashes?
There's more than one way to skin a cat...errr...dog. Message
Dateline January 16 2004: "Mars is inhabited", announced The European Space Agency today. The agency was commenting on publication of photos that were released last week of suspicious shadows on the planetary surface. These shadows, as some believe, are apparently moving too quickly to be generated by the Sun. The seven digital images were taken with the Beagle's only telephoto high resolution camera, one of six specially designed cameras aboard the lander. No word is forthcoming about any of the other data being transmitted back though. The British scientific team has relaeased little information, citing national security issues under pressure from several of the nations involved....
I guess there will be no "The beagle has landed"
Listen... the editors have to stay on top of these stories.
/. editors have allowed a BOGUS story to make it to the frontpage... pretty sad boys (:-
If you listened to the Beagle2 webcast you would know that first contact expectations for this morning were very low and the team leader stated repeatedly that this was expected so...
Once again
Oh wait it looks like another SCO story is breaking on the frontpage... Gotta go!
IAAAE (I am an Aerospace Engineer.)
Martian dust storms are not the big deal many people imagine they are. We're used to hurricanes, able to generate winds so strong that people are literally blown off their feet. And a few months ago we heard soldiers describe sandstorms in Iraq, where grains of sand are whipped against your skin so hard that it stings like hell.
On Mars however, the atmosphere is so thin that storm effects are quite different. The dust raised by these storms consists of tiny talcum-powder-sized particles. These thin winds would never have the "oomph" to pick up a grain of sand.
And a "raging" 150 mph wind on Mars would not be able to knock a person on his or her butt. It would only carry as much force as a relatively gentle 18 mph Earth wind.
The only possible ill-effect from a dust storm, is that a thin layer of dust might coat the lander's solar panel and reduce its efficiency by a few percent. (Not enough to prevent the lander from phoning home, though.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
This spacecraft Answers to the name of Beagle 2. Reward.
If you know about the storm, then I suppose the Beagle 2 team knew about it too. Then why didn't they postpone the descent? Did it just have to land on Xmas? Or did the bad weather start after separation, a few days ago...
I couldn't find anything about current weather conditions, or something like a narrow 'landing window' (which might be a reason to press on) on the beagle2 site. Just that they followed some predetermined schedule. Not such a good idea, maybe?
I suppose you think they've got technicians on Mars to fix the piece of junk.
It doesn't work. It can't be fixed. It's a failure.
Well I think I know what the real cause of this failure is. If you take a look at the photo accompanying the BBC story, you can clearly see that instead of doing their jobs, all this time the mission support staff has been pre-occupied by a two-way game of Tetris!
Sheesh. How can we expect these people to properly land a delicate scientific instrument on Mars, if they can't even pretend to be working when a cameraman walks by?
According to the official site:
;)
"The next chance to try again with Odyssey will be Boxing Day evening. "
Obviously they expect someone or something to bring it back amist all the shopping folly and no one will bother check that its broken, and get a full refund.
Even if a confirmation of the failure of Beagle 2 would be a huge disappointment, we have to keep in mind that Mars Express has successfully swooped into Mars' orbit.
And even if the most spectacular experiments were to be conducted by Beagle 2, Mars Express carries numerous instruments :
A sub-surface sounding radar which could be used to find ice under the surface,
a high resolution stereo camera to analyse further the topology of Mars,
visible, infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers to analyse the composition of the surface and the atmosphere,
and an "Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyser" to quantify the interactions between solar winds and martian atmosphere.
Rejoice ! We and scientists will still get our christmas present !
This comment is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
This is kind of misleading. Of the 30 total missions to Mars, only nine were attempted landers. THis gives a lander failulre rate of 1/3 instead of 1/10, which BBC implies. The other 21 craft were orbiters and the like.
On a further note, I felt BBC did indulge in nationalistic bias as of yesterday, which people in Slashdot previously praised them of not doing with this story. Firstly, there's the misleading lander success rate above. They also compared to the successful US missions, calling them costly and implying wasteful. Although now that they cannot get a signal from the craft they took this bit out of the story.
This is misleading because the two Viking landers were built decades ago using even older technology. The more recent Mars Pathfinder event was, however, on a cheaper budget, part of a Nasa Discovery Mission, which built/tested the craft for 150 million. This approach included researching the parachute/airbag landing, which the Beagle 2 was able to imitate. ALso, comparing the cost of building a rover (Pathfinder) vs. a robot arm (Beagle) isnt' fair as a rover is much more complex.
On a different note, all hope is not lost yet. There are still banks of receiver antennas in case the Beagle's antenna is pointing the wrong way such that NASA's Mars Odyssey craft couldn't pick it up.
make world, not war
Well I've often read stories about the heroism of NASA engineers (and probably other countries have their own share but not as good PR) in which they save space probes via radioed commands. Only problem is it is having trouble on the surface of a planet and at least to the nonexperts it sounds like that means it was cracked up. But you know the power is probably still running, it is very possibly somewhere between a total disaster and a working probe. Time will tell.. and maybe later probes.
How long before we see another one of these landers for sale , dirt cheap, on eBay (Buyer must arrange their own shipping) ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
For the sake of space exploration budgets everywhere, I certainly hope we hear the equivalent of "tranquility base, the Beagle has landed" very soon. A lot of peripheral good science comes out of these space programs (medical advances, improved energy effeciencies, etc).
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
The BBC isn't calling this a "major setback", so you've obviously been engaging in that favorite Slashdot activity: Posting While Being Ignorant.
Look, the point is that the Reuters report used, without attribution, the phrase "major failure". In other words, it is Reuters itself calling this a "major setback". Reuters lacks the credentials to make that judgement. That's why it's sloppy journalism. If someone with credentials said it and Reuters omitted the attribution, that's one kind of sloppy journalism. If the Reuters reporter conjured the phrase out of thin air, that's another kind of sloppy journalism.
Journalism is full of talking heads and reporters who insist on telling us what they think. If I want to learn what someone thinks, I'll read the editorial page or look for a columnist, but I want unsourced opinions kept out of the news.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Doesn't this explain it? Nasa's Mars Odyssey orbiter...failed to detect the expected message - a nine-note tune composed by the pop group Blur.
The Martians just don't like BritPop!
Point is, it wasn't their only relay but it was their first.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I don't think the martians would be too keen on us firing huge steel nuclear devices at them, it could mean War !
if the probe is successful.
/. crowd would love to spend more so that we could successfully land another rover on that godforsaken planet.
/. are as deluded as the general population when it comes to space travel.
The point of the endeavor is to spend 100 million. The money has been spent. Next. NASA likes to spend much more, but those with the cash are getting increasingly impatient so the price of an unsuccessful mission has declined. Now we spend on several missions what we used to on one. The money still gets to where the scientists would like the money spent. If not on satellites or telescopes then probes. Huntsville, Jacksonville, Houston etc must be fed at the trough of the taxpayers.
The last two unsuccessful NASA missions cost over a BILLION dollars. That's a lot of money to merely blow up on approach, (how much for universal health care in America?) yet most of the
Here's the facts- for those scientifically challenged scientists: THERE IS NOTHING THERE BUT ROCK!
I repeat: THERE IS NOTHING THERE BUT ROCK! The exploration of near space has repeatedly shown us- to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars that there is NOTHING THERE. Smart huh? Like a Fox.
So bury your head in the sand with your reruns of Star Trek and dream on, cus you've just witnessed the space machine getting fed again.
Anon post cus most of
With that being said, if you've paid attention, the spacecraft still has several opportunities to phone home for the next couple of days, so all's not lost. And if it does pop up for air and begin to spit out data, I'll bet the farm that once again it'll prove that THERE IS NOTHING THERE BUT ROCK. NEXT!
They shouldn't have been so tight with their money and opted for the multiple battery model. Or maybe they should have got Michael Jordan as an advisor, who better to know how to deal with things that bounce?
Funny how the Reuters UK article considers this a British failure (the title is "Major Setback for Britain's Mars Probe Mission"), when in fact it is a European Space Agency mission (with American involvement too, i think).
Looking at an animation of the landing sequence, it strikes me that there are too many steps in the process. The failure of a single step would likely doom the thing. Things have to pop off at the right time, the parachute has to come out at the right time, it has to inflate 3 different airbags at the right time, and after landing and bouncing around, the 3 airbags have to all separate from the craft properly.
It seems Mars landings might be more smooth, predictable, and time-tested if a standard landing platform was created instead of reinventing a new one for each mission, as has been done. One might have to divide instruments into two or more separate landers to keep the per-probe size consistent, but at least it would increase the odds of a successful landing it seems to me. With something this complicated, you need to introduce more consistency so that a fixed technique can be perfected over time. Imagine what would happen if each Apollo lander was almost entirely redesigned for each moon mission.
Table-ized A.I.
Just shows how diffifult it is to land something on another planet when there's no crew aboard.
Come to think of it, odds are the Apollo 11 lander would have crashed if pilots had not been onboard. If memory serves, the designated landing spot wasn't appropriate, so Armstrong flew the thing manually to another spot.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The Apollo landings were all hoaxes.
Similarly we can explain the fact that supposedly 2 out of 2 Mars landers were successful almost 30 years ago while current Mars landers (which cost about the same in real dollars) are likely to fail:
The Viking landings were hoaxes.
I mean to believe otherwise would cast into doubt that the sociopolitical changes of the last 30 years were a true advance.
This is probably a sign that Leif Erikson didn't actually discover the New World. The supposed chronology is that in 1000AD Leif Erikson discovered the New World (aka "Vinnland") at the same time Iceland converetd to Christianity.
That Roman Catholic authorities would have suppressed knowledge of such a discovery for hundreds of years is no more plausible than that little Viking boats navigated harsh arctic waters to the New World hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus, with his enormous merchant ships, succeeded in crossing the Atlantic and setting foot there.
I mean to believe otherwise would cast into doubt that the sociopolitical changes of the first half of the last millenium were a true advance.
Seastead this.
January is far too late as Beagle's batteries last only a day or so.
If nothing's heard by boxing day, it's all over except for
(non-beagle) data from the Mars express orbiter.
The remarkable success of the NASA Vikings in '76
looks better and better as time goes by.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
From: Earth
Subj: Mars Probes
Dear Sir, Madam, or Whatever;
If you little green men don't stop shooting down our probes, we are going to have to kick your butts! Don't make us come down there ourselves. We'll plant JDAMs right between your pointy little antennae!
V/r,
Tony Blair
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Now is the time to shmear some mayo incarnated as Power Point. It never fails....
Well,
... about the touch down we do not know so far. The reason is: the first craft able to pick up Beagel hail signal "by chance" was Mars Odyssey. Mars Odyssey did not pick up a signal.
.. finally .. it is in survey orbit for Mars and in a regular contact with Beagle.
likely BBC exagerate or the story poster did.
Beagle has entered the atmossphere
Thats what we know.
So. The plan is that Mars Express, the mothership of Beagel, will make contact to Beagle TODAY -- not 20 hours before!! -- around 22:40 GMT. After 22:40 GMT we will know if Beagle touched down successfully.
For more information look at: www.esa.int, and follow the link to the web stream http://esa.capcave.com/esa/marsexpress/
However, making contact to Beagle is not the primary goal right now. Mars express is supposed to perform two important manouvers first: Appogee reduction(currently we are in a 10 day orbit), to get the orbit more circular instead of a high ellipse, and second: an orbit inclination change manouver to get the currently equatorial orbit inot a polar orbit.
Its well possible(I dont know the orbit data) that after the orbit is polar it will take several days until Mars Express is in an orbit position to pick up Beagels signals.
After the craft is in polar orbit, it will do about 9 further manouvers to reduce its 100,000 km orbit into a 11,000 km orbit. Then
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Russian Capsules used parachutes. I seem to recall story of one of the craft's parachutes not deploying.
/think/ the capsule wasn't in too many pieces, but the crew didn't survive.
Splat.
I
We don't need any friends.
MOTHER FUCKER!
Somebody just forgot the damned adapter.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Because all of their refrigerators are made by Lucas.
(and if you ever owned a Triumph or an MG you know what I'm talking about)
I looked at the website, aren't these guys from robot wars?
http://www.beagle2.com/weblog/index.htm
We'll know more tomorrow, right? This joke will be more or less funny then.
[o]_O
Heaven help us if the Martians get their grasping appendages on an Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!
... PULL! ROFL :p
You don't mention Mars Express probe at all. This is the main mission. It is succesfully in orbit now.
The Beagle 2 hasn't failed yet. It was just the first possible communications attempt.
Your article is worse crap than what most news sites post. I'd expect better from people here who supposedly should have a clue.
I can't do it Captain! I Dooont Have the Powwwer!
sumimasen tomodachi, I did'nt read the reuters article. I was reading offline so I read the BBC article,closed the tab, then read slashdot and in a moment of self suredness I posted my comment, but my opinion still stands that TV news should'nt carp on about others technical failures.
It seems as if Buck Turgidson knows why the Beagle failed.
"look, these guys talk big, but frankly, we think they're short of know-how. You can't just take a bunch of ignorant peasants and expect them to understand a machine like one of our boys, and I don't mean that as an insult"
ROFL!
This is why you buy tons of batteries for Christmas; otherwise your new toys will not work!
Just wondering
Remember this from last week?
"Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration"
KHAN:
Goodbye, Admiral. Oh, and don't
count on the Beagle. She can't
move. My next act will be to blow
her out of the heavens.
KIRK:
KHAN!
Michael.
Linux : Mac
-- Stamp out entropy. ->dryguy@bellsloth.net
My contribution to this episode of the Tin Foil Hat Theater:
The article mentioned above, about strange theories behind the disappearance of the Russian Phobos 2 probe, mentions a "highly secret" photo that was the last image taken by this probe. The article speculates it's a shot of the spacecraft that destroyed the probe. I found the picture they're talking about.
If this is a spacecraft it would be about 20 km long, like a Culture GSV in the Iain Banks novels. More likely it's just a streak in an image created by a failing instrument.
It's funny though, there's a whole lot of web pages out there speculating that Phobos is an alien base or spacecraft. It seems to be a nexus for a whole lot of UFO speculation.
I agree aout the purpose of space travel. However, the reason it is expensive to put humans in space is that it is a government monopoly.
Imagine what would have happened to aviation if the government has prevented the Wrights from flying, continued funding Langley, and blocked all non-gov't aviation efforts. That's rather analogous to the approach governments -- all governments, not just the U.S. -- have taken toward space flight.
Put another way, where's the last place to look if you want something done in a cost-effective way?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Last seen in orbit. huge reward. call xx-xxx-xxx-xxxx
How about we sending up all those PCs to be recycled and just dumping them on Mars?
If anyone says "Ha, you blew it again, lamerz!", we respond "We did it on purpose, dude, freak off!".
The Beagle Has Landed! Or not!
I'll refrain from bringing up the spirit of aerospace engineering in the 50's to the 60's and the spirit now, but gosh, they USED to get the job done. God willing, Scaled Composites will turn Boeing and Luckup on their heads, knock over a few anthills, and cheapen the cost to orbit.
They should have named it after a Golden Retriever; that's a much more reliable dog (Darwin homage aside).
I'll second that: what a load of disgusting commercial vomit it's turned into. It was once a family get-together occasion, and a religious occasion for those into religion, now it's the time of the year where people in debt feel obliged to go deeper in dept in order to buy enough food to feel adequately sick, children to cram their bedrooms with even more toys than the rest of the year, and stores to go plum crazy with ads and commercial trick to try to increase their sales.
And I'll second that. Christmas was pretty awesome when I was a kid. My entire family would get together at the house I lived in growing up. Myself, my mom and dad, and all my brothers and sisters and their kids (my nieces and nephews.) (Yes - I was an uncle at a very young age due to the large age gap between me and my older siblings.)
But we would get together every Christmas Eve (not sure why it was Christmas Eve and not Christmas day - but back then I never cared). We would spend the entire day playing board/table games, eating a big Christmas lunch/dinner, playing more games, and then opening presents in the evening.
The games are some of my fondest memories. My brother and brother in laws and myself would have these 3 and 4 hour Risk marathons. And when I got a little older we would have 6 or 8 hour Axis and Allies marathons. It was great.
But people inevitably grow up and things totally change. Family issues. So this year I spent Christmas in the house by myself catching up on "Tivo" (Brighthouse DVR) shows. Christmas dinner was two slices of wheat bread and prepackaged thin chicken slices. (Forgot to prepare for the fact that every fast food and take out restaurant place is closed on Christmas day.)
So like I said in the original post, I hate Christmas.
I half expected this sort of thing to happen, my insight into this feeling is thus:
Anything worth doing, is worth doing right!
If I were on the management team for a project such as this, if the odds of success were not at least 50% or higher for success, why bother? Instead of wasting the time/money/HOPE of many people, have patience; i.e. take more time to design in redundancy, test better, etc..
You don't have to agree with me, but it just seems silly to me.
....move along....nothing to see here....
When the heck is Boxing day, as mentioned on beagle2.com?
It's very annoying when a date is referred to by the holiday that happens to fall on it, even when it's a holiday I'm familiar with.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Is it any wonder that Europe has consistently failed in its futile attempts to best the US ?
They really ought to simply give in to their built-in instinct to surrender and get back to sipping wine, eating cheese, andcomplaining about how unfair market economies are.
Let's see, it traveled a huge distance through space. Lands on Mars around Christmas, and find no presents. It must be pissed off and sulking under a rock.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Maybe you'll find this interesting : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-12/26/conte nt_1249246.htm
"Experts at the agency detected the signal from the Beagle 2 with a radio telescope but failed to get in touch with the probe designed to land on Mars. "
If this Chinese news agency is right, it looks like the probe is not fully destroyed. At least, it can emit something.
Then, I'd like to share with you two questions I'm asking myself :
1. How do I/you call a partnership (ESA-NASA) where one of the two partners doesn't want to share his protocol specs ?
2. Can we have a true comparison between the budget sizes and ROI expectations for the current ESA-led mission, and for the previous NASA-led ones ?
I mean, if the whole gold bag had been spent on Mars Express alone, would the price have exceeded the amount of money spent by US on similar, one-part missions ?
Mmmh, maybe this mission is a success, after all.
The one hope is that Jodrell picks up something ... assuming they don't get jammed.
;)
From www.beagle2.com:
An attempt to listen out for Beagle's call home by the Westerbork telescope array in the Netherlands was unfortunately interrupted by strong radio interference.
Definitly a Conspiracy.
Strange that nobody had this simple explanation: Beagle looked for water, didn't it? And what if it indeed did find water, and just drowned?
That would be a huge success, wouldn't it? Well, unfortunately there are no Journalists to tell us this...
Cowards.
Well, well
The remarkable success of the NASA Vikings in '76 looks better and better as time goes by.
Don't forget Pathfinder/Carl Sagan Station. That 1997 puppy gave a huge chunk of science, not to mention the (as of yet not-repeated) sucess of the got-it-right-on-the-first-try airbag system...
hey, atleast you had that great opportunity when you were younger, some of us did not.
the power needed to run the wiper could conceivably be more than the power lost due to the dust and transporting the extra weight to Mars.
More likely, if instead of adding wipers that weigh say half a kilogram, you use that half-kilogram to increase the surface area of the solar panels a little, you'll be ahead of the game.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
High sustained winds during the parachute descent would indeed accelerate the lander as you described.
:) I don't know how often, if ever, 150 mph winds are encountered on Mars.
OTOH, you repeated the "150 mph" speed which is a figure I frankly pulled out of my butt.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.