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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."
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
The EU was using the metric system and the Martians are on the English system. Ft. lbs. != Newton meters.
*rolls eyes*
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...
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
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 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!
Fact is: if we keep crashing stuff into Mars, they are going to get pissed off eventually and launch a WAR ON TERROR. They will bring their fleets of ships to Earth to hunt out the terrorist leaders responsible; capture them and then broadcast the medical examination (different orifice though)... as a warning to others.
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. :)
If it was running FreeBSD it would not have failed!
Well the probe is dead isn't it? It must have been running BSD then...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And, find out here what options they have to communicate with beagle
So if Mars is only slightly larger than the moon, then I suppose I'm only slightly larger than a 20-pound, 3-foot toddler.
But I see your point.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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?
The BBC's description is not entirely fair. Many of the missions did not even try to put a lander on the surface, but just do a flyby or go into orbit.
The proper comparison is either how many of the 30 met mission goals, or how many of the lander attempts were successful. The success rate under either standard is much higher than the BBC quote would indicate.
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.
"What is there that is killing the probes? "
Probably a combination of budgetary constraints and a poor understanding of the engineer challenges necessary to land a probe on the planet.
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.
At the very least, it will give the conspiracy theorists more "facts" for their side. I bet that face on Mars is smiling today.
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.)
We keep sending them, and the Martians keep shooting them down.
The few that were allowed to land were carefully directed to desolate areas, well away from the Martian civilization.
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 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!
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
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.
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.
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.
As far as I can tell, everything was preprogrammed and designed specifically for the insertion which occurred, therefore they couldn't have done anything regardless of what weather conditions are right now.
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
I dunno. Russians built about fifteen venera probes/landers to go to venus. they had nowhere NEAR the failures we've had now.
Soviet landers had bad luck on Mars also. Venus is easier to land on because its super-thick atmosphere enables the probe to "float" to a landing practically. It would almost be like the earth's atmosphere gradually blending into the ocean so that a probe would gradually become a submarine more or less. The Venus probes thus did not need as sophisticated landing sequences. Surviving the heat of Venus is the hard part, not the landing. Plus, it seems Soviet success on Venus prompted further Venus probes on their part. They gave up on Mars, one could say.
Table-ized A.I.
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...
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"
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"
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.
Many lives were sacrificed to get the United States to the moon. Your claim is not justified and very offensive. The Apollo program was/is an engineering marvel that should be embraced by all mankind. Here are some rebuttals to your feeble claim of a moon hoax.
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...'
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.
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.