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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."
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.
I dunno. Russians built about fifteen venera probes/landers to go to venus. they had nowhere NEAR the failures we've had now.
Different technologies though, different times, unlimited budgets... the 70s and 80s were a whole other world when it came to space
I think thats a poor comparison - the Beagle 2 is a very low cost probe ad so are its landing systems - I don't believe we will ever use bouncing balls for a manned landing and a human is a much more adaptable landing computer than any automated system we could build (yet).
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.
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.
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.)
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.
But Russians sent two missions to Mars satellite and both failed. The second one failed in a mysterious way: read here http://www.skiesare.demon.co.uk/phob-3.htm or search with google for other articles.
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.
So it's a combination of: Politicians saying 'This is how much it will cost.' Management saying 'This is how you'll do it.' Engineers saying 'Awwwww, crap...'
The truth is that putting a lander into orbit first and then, once the 'coast is clear' sending it down to the surface is of course the optimum way of doing things but it's also the most expensive. Mars Express did not have enough fuel onboard to complete its orbit insertion with the additional mass of Beagle attached. Had Beagle not been ejected either through choice or through malfunction of the Spin up and eject mechanism, Mars Express would have impacted with Mars and that would have been it.