Jodrell Bank Telescope Gets No Signal From Beagle

tipiyano writes "Continuing the story of Beagle 2 from earlier today it seems like the hope for Beagle 2 surviving the landing at Mars is reducing as the Jodrell Bank telescope didn't receive any signal from Beagle. In the words of a mission manager, 'I wasn't too worried about the missed link with Odyssey, but it starts getting serious if Jodrell Bank cannot get a signal either'."

Comments

Wow...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Makes all of those lame "NO CARRIER" posts seem all the more serious when NASA has the same pro%#$@#&!*^J@^ATDT[NO CARRIER]

Re:Wow...

[jagilbertvt]

ESA not NASA this time...

DOA

[the arbiter]

Looks like the Martians got another one...

Re:DOA

[bsharitt]

They send these probes to find life, and I think the life on Mars is destroying them so they won't be found out. The next Mars mission should involve the Marines and 101st Airborne.

Re:DOA

[xeno_gearz]

Perhaps so. We could send a team of space marines just like Aliens 2. Maybe we can send that Paul Reiser as well. :)

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Re:DOA

[sce2aux]

I'll believe in Martians when I pry a Beagle from their cold, dead fingers?

Re:DOA

[Doug Neal]

If there are 10 types of people in the world, as you state, then you are using 2 bits to encode your possible types. This breaks down to (etc)

There are four combinations of the two symbols (bits), yes. That does not mean that the meaning of "10" in binary is 4 in decimal. It's 2.

0 -> 0
1 -> 1
10 -> 2
11 -> 3

I could say
"There are 2 types of people in the world. Those that know binary and those that don't" - that's in decimal - does that mean that because I'm using decimal, and one symbol, I actually mean 10? No, because I said fucking 2!

I think you're the smart ass fuckhead who thinks he knows binary but doesn't.

I hope you got a nice jar of prozac for Christmas, you seem to need it.

Re:DOA

[Ataru]

You're the thicko, bub. (btw I'm not American)
I put the leading zeros in to illustrate that you are wrong. To illustrate that the number of representable values given a certain number of digits is different from any particular number formed using those digits (10 is greater than 0 or 1 or 9).
I just told you that you don't understand binary, why are you trying to give me a lecture on it?
"With your statement"... Well, you need to learn to read as well. I am Ataru and the .sig you failed to rebut is Juglugs'. You, unfortunately, are hiding as AC so we can't revoke your license to ever touch a computer ever again. If you could stop spreading your "ideas" about binary, though, that would be nice.

Re:DOA

[geoffspear]

Uh, yeah. If you assign 0 to one possibility and 1 to the other, that's still 10 different possibilities, not 1.

In decimal numbers, the set {0, 1} contains 2 items, not 1.

Re:DOA

[Ataru]

LOL, do you know how stupid you look right now?
You should have stopped digging a few posts back.
It doesn't matter if you're using binary or decimal, one is still one, and it doesn't take the plural form. You're thinking "2 types" but writing "1 types".
You are possibly the most clueless /. user ever, and believe me mate, that takes some doing.

Re:DOA

[steeviant]

I think he's a lloyd.

Re:DOA

[avgjoe62]

>The binary value 10 needs a MINIMUM of 2 bits to be stored. Therefore, m^N would be 2^2, which is of course equal to 4.

He wasn't storing it. He was writing it in a post. It does not represent stored bits, he was writing the number two in binary form.

Get your head out of your posterior... your're displaying the same understanding I expect from SCO.

Re:DOA

[avgjoe62]

1 is 1, regardless of whether I use binary or decimal.

10 is ten in decimal and 10 is two in binary.

When wil they learn?

[scorp1us]

That bouncing a spacecraft is just a bad idea? We're waht - one for 3? The old viking probes had a much better track record!

Re:When wil they learn?

[cascino]

If I remember correctly, we're 1 for 2 with the "bouncing spacecraft" idea (Pathfinder was successful, it looks like Beagle was not). Of the two failures in 2001, neither craft used the inflated-airbag approach; the lander used the old Viking method of landing (ie: rocket braking), while the orbiter simply went off course.
I'm sure the Europeans are using a slightly different design than the Americans anyways, so from a NASA point of view, it's actually 1 for 1. We'll see within the next month whether this method is worthwhile or not.

Re:When wil they learn?

[Draveed]

Airbags are still more cost effective than trying for a soft landing. The 2 Viking probes cost how much, like a billion? Beagle 2 cost only $62 million (or maybe it was in pounds, I forget). So if Britain built 16 Beagle probes (for $992 million) and sent them to Mars, it would cost about the same, but cover more of the planet than the Viking landers. Even if only a third survived, lets say just 3 since you can't a fraction of a working probe, it still covers one more spot than Viking.

Re:When wil they learn?

[applemasker]

Try 1 for 1, not counting Beagle or the current Spirit and Opportunity probes.

The other failures did not involve airbags - Mars Observer was an orbiter that went silent some kind of problem with the thrusters is suspected to be the cause, but we'll never know for sure; Mars Climate Orbiter got crispy over the metric/imperial units mixup during aerobraking/orbit insertion; and Mars Polar Lander did, in fact, attempt a Viking-like powered descent and it's theorized that when the landing legs deployed and locked, they incorrectly signaled the guidance system that the craft had landed, and the engine cut off too early, and it fell from a height of some 50m.

Re:When wil they learn?

[mijok]

No, they were luckier. If you've looked at the pictures they took one of them (I don't remember if it was 1 or 2) landed right next to a rock which was big enough to break the probe if it had landed on it. I remember seeing an interview with an engineer involved in the mission - he explained that all they could do was pick the safest looking area but the images taken from orbit were nowhere near good enough to spot such rocks (not to mention that they didn't have the precision to avoid them either).

Re:When wil they learn?

[thermopile]

I have an honest question, and maybe someone who's familiar with this kind of stuff can elucidate. IANARS.

Why not retro rocket thrusters? Okay, okay, I speculate they're heavy and they're complicated, but they seemed to work pretty well on the Vikings and the Russian-built Venera. And all the lunar landings, too. Can someone quantify *how* much heavier, or how much bulkier retro-rocket thrusters are than airbags? I really have no idea.

Re:When wil they learn?

[S.Lemmon]

Just to add another uninformed opinion to the mix, I'd guess it's the fuel rather than the thrusters that take up most of the weight.

Of course it's not like it's rocket science or anyth... - oh crap it is isn't it.

Re:When wil they learn?

[gaijin99]

Why not retro rocket thrusters? Okay, okay, I speculate they're heavy and they're complicated

I suspect its the "complicated" aspect that makes them undesireable. Even for a moon landing remote control would have too much speed of light lag to be workable, which means Mars is right out for that approach. Computer controlled rocket landing sounds like a recipe for disaster, there's simply too many variables happening in realtime. Obviously it worked for the Viking series, but I suspect that we had unusually good luck there. And, as has been pointed out, the Viking probes were both huge and expensive, more room to cram in control systems.

Recall that it was only because Neil Armstrong was such a hotshot pilot that Apollo 11 didn't crash and kill them both. Well, that and he insisted on the lander carrying enough fuel for an emergency maneuver like the one he performed.

Re:When wil they learn?

[ross axe]

The other failures did not involve airbags - Mars Observer was an orbiter that went silent some kind of problem with the thrusters is suspected to be the cause, but we'll never know for sure;

Never is a long time...

Mind you, knowing for sure is a pretty strong statement as well.

Re:When wil they learn?

[mOoZik]

It's really a weight issue. Beagle 2 is 68 Kilograms. The Viking landers were around 576 Kilograms, around 200 pounds of which was fuel. Beagle 2 was also done on a shoestring budget, which would have made it impossible to build and test custom engines (perhaps hydrazine monopropellant, as used on the Vikings). Furthermore, launch cost would have been increased as a result of the weight, not to mention further complicating the design of the Mars Express, upon which Beagle 2 hitched the ride. Again, we still don't know what happened, so to assume that the lander was damaged due to the bounces is pretty ridiculous. It could have been a million other single-point failures, as the lander had absolutely no redundancy whatsoever.

Re:When wil they learn?

[Dr. Photo]

Try 1 for 1, not counting Beagle or the current Spirit and Opportunity probes.

Shh... don't jinx it. It'd be tragic to see Spirit crushed, and Opportunity lost. ;-)

Re:When wil they learn?

[gujo-odori]

The Viking landers were around 576 Kilograms, around 200 pounds of which was fuel.

Now, see, that's just the sort of mixing of Metric and Imperial measure that got us in trouble on Mars before :-)

Re:When wil they learn?

[Darby]

Beagle 2 is 68 Kilograms. The Viking landers were around 576 Kilograms, around 200 pounds of which was fuel.

Dude, seriously don't mix up your units. We already crashed one over that.

Re:When wil they learn?

[mOoZik]

The Viking weight is from the official web site, but the fuel weight was from memory from having read official specs. No harm done. :)

Re:When wil they learn?

[golgotha007]

I speculate they're heavy and they're complicated, but they seemed to work pretty well on the Vikings and the Russian-built Venera.

the Venera project by the Soviets was used for landings on Venus by method of protective hemispheric shells, three parachutes, a disk-shaped drag brake, and a compressible, metal, doughnut-shaped, landing cushion.

Venera didn't use retro rocket thrusters.

Re:When wil they learn?

[applemasker]

I stand by both statements. Unless you are going to locate, retreive and analyze the debris, there is no conclusive way to determine the cause, for sure, ever.

See - http://www.msss.com/mars/observer/project/mo_loss/ moloss.html

The Coffey Board report stated that the most probable cause of the loss of communications with the spacecraft on Aug. 21, 1993, was a rupture of the fuel (monomethyl hydrazine (MMH)) pressurization side of the spacecraft's propulsion system, resulting in a pressurized leak of both helium gas and liquid MMH under the spacecraft's thermal blanket. The gas and liquid would most likely have leaked out from under the blanket in an unsymmetrical manner, resulting in a net spin rate. This high spin rate would cause the spacecraft to enter into the "contingency mode," which interrupted the stored command sequence and thus, did not turn the transmitter on.

Hydrazine is nasty stuff, extremely reactive and toxic. Even if the pressurized leak did not cause a fatal spin, then the hydrazine itself could have destroyed vital systems, or worse yet, if it found the oxydizer, ignited on contact since it's a hypergolic propellent.

The Board and JPL also identified five other possible causes:

1. failure of the electrical power system, due to a regulated power bus short circuit;

2. NTO tank over-pressurization and rupture due to pressurization regulator failure;

3. the accidental high-speed ejection of a NASA standard initiator from a pyro valve into the MMH tank or other spacecraft system.

4. Loss of function that prevented both the spacecraft's main and backup computers from controlling the spacecraft;

5. Loss of both the main and backup transmitters due to failure of an electronic part.

Re:When wil they learn?

[applemasker]

Since Mars Observer fell silent just 3 days prior to entering orbit around Mars, following the pressurization of the rocket thruster fuel tanks, my impression is that it flew past Mars, did not impact on the surface and remains in some eccentric sol-based orbit.

Of course, if it did hit the surface, the debris are worthy of analysis and could provide conclusive evidence of the failure scenario, but I haven't read about any efforts to image a Mars Observer debris field (locating the general area of such an impact should be straightforward since they did it for Mars Polar Lander).

Re:When wil they learn?

[the_2nd_coming]

anyone ever given thought to the fact that if Human's die out and another species comes up in our place or our civilization falls and another Human civilization comes up with no recollection of our history that when they look at mars and see out technology strewn about on the surface that they might be lead to believe that the plane was home to an advanced race of beings?

and if you think that is funny...what will they think about the moon!!!

Re:When wil they learn?

[fluxline]

there is also the design requirement of getting a roving vehicle off the lander. thrusters must sit under the lander and make it much more difficult to the rover off. de-flatable bags keep things nice and low to the ground. beagle did not need this, but it was a 'simple' landing mechanism.

Looks like someone...

[Valar]

forgot the double-A's again this Christmas...

Re:Looks like someone...

[Bastian227]

From the article: The air bags would then be cut off, freeing Beagle-2 to flip itself open, pocket-watch style, and send a signal to Odyssey.

No, I think they forgot to wind it.

Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[ObviousGuy]

But what about the Beagle's problems? It's all alone on Mars and probably can't signal back it's existence.

Poor thing.

Re:Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[bsharitt]

I would have sent a black lab myself. Beagles never come back.

Re:Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[arth1]

But what about the Beagle's problems? It's all alone on Mars and probably can't signal back it's existence.

It's not alone. It has the company of three other failed Mars probes, and is busy grokking Barsoom.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[Dorothy 86]

I would have sent a black lab myself. Beagles never come back.

It's not that they just don't come back; they get busy! They
1)become ww2 fighter piolets
or 2)Live in a cactus in the desert

;-)

Re:Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[red floyd]

become ww2 fighter piolets

That's WWI fighter pilots. Snoopy "flew" a Sopwith Camel biplane.

Re:Everyone is talking about the problems on Earth

[marnanel]

I would have sent a black lab myself. Beagles never come back.

This must be a job for... Skylab!

(But seriously, I guess you're right. The last time anyone sent a beagle into space, she did indeed never come back.)

Bummer

[WindBourne]

But the truth is, this is rocket science. Here is to hoping that the explorers do better.

2 possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The Europeans are as incompetent as the Americunts (naaaaaah!)
2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!

Re:2 possibilities

[xeno_gearz]

1. The Europeans are as incompetent as the Americunts (naaaaaah!)
2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!

Maybe the ESA has problems with metric conversions as well. I think NASA will have better luck in January, or at least I hope.

Re:2 possibilities

[xeno_gearz]

Converting metric to metric is pretty hard, yeah.
Precisely, my point exactly.

Re:2 possibilities

[Stinking Pig]

"Stay away from those cans! He hates those cans!!"

Re:2 possibilities

[blincoln]

2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!

One downed probe is a technical issue.

Two are a coincidence.

Three is an ancient - but still partially active - Martian missile-defence system. You thought the craters on that planet were from asteroids? Hah, they're all that remains to tell the tale of the nuclear war that wiped Mars clean.

=P

Re:2 possibilities

[AndreyF]

how insightful :) (joke)

Re:2 possibilities

[mantera]

"2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!"... i'll go with the second possibility as i doubt anyone likes to be probed..

Re:2 possibilities

[spacecowboy420]

Hey genius, all of us "Americunts" are imported anyway. The only truly American contribution would be one made entirely of Navajos or the like. So, yes, you are right europeans are always involved - as well as any other nationallity that wants a better life in America and works at NASA.

Re:2 possibilities

[bedurndurn]

Technically, the Navajos and the like are also imported umm "Americunts", just a much earlier importation.

Re:2 possibilities

[M1FCJ]

It should be alright as long as Riker is not commanding it. Two times he commanded Enterprise alone, once he crashed the damn thing onto a planet (how can you not miss something that big!!), the second time he almost trashed it, still needed a service though.

Re:2 possibilities

[Grizzlysmit]

1. The Europeans are as incompetent as the Americunts (naaaaaah!)
2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!

Or lets see, Mars could be a harsh planet with rugged terrain.

come on there's no need to get weird, have a good look at some of what we know about Mars, there's more than enough information to indicate that Mars is tricky to land on, and then if things go even a little wrong, there's more than enough to explain how the normal martian environment could destroy a damaged craft.

Re:2 possibilities

[palmersperry]

> 2. There is something on Mars which hates space probes!

Well given that the Beagle 2 was meant to announce it's successful landing on Mars by playing a piece of music by Blur maybe it's just the case that the Martians have better taste in music than the builders of the Beagle 2?

Re:2 possibilities

[Lars T.]

Hey, you'ld be better off with him than with Dubya.

Re:2 possibilities

[crawling_chaos]

Senator Orrin Hatch has proposed just such an amendment.

Re:2 possibilities

[AndroidCat]

I know! Princess Anne's bull-terrier got the Beagle as well as the Queen's corgi.

Re:2 possibilities

[*SpOoNdRiFt*]

Grow up! you sound like a bunch of babies. My country is better than your country nah-nah-na-na-nahh-na... Pull-eeze

Re:2 possibilities

[NickFitz]

You trendy EuroTrash need to spend less time pimping and preening

I don't think anybody has ever previously accused Prof. Colin Pillinger of being a fashion victim...

Re:2 possibilities

[Dun Malg]

For a government that has passed insane laws like the DMCA and the Patriot Act, a constitutional amendment to let Arnie become president shouldn't be all that difficult.

I know you're just making a humorous point, but constitutional amendments are pretty difficult to pass. I mean, nobody ever voted in an amendment in the middle of the night.

Re:2 possibilities

[sharkey]

i'll go with the second possibility as i doubt anyone likes to be probed..

You're just BEGGING for a goatse link, aren't you?

Re:2 possibilities

[WhiteBandit]

Well given that the Beagle 2 was meant to announce it's successful landing on Mars by playing a piece of music by Blur maybe it's just the case that the Martians have better taste in music than the builders of the Beagle 2?

Such as 4'33" by John Cage? ;)

Re:2 possibilities

[Avihson]

Hell, I even get laid in Europe... And I don't have to visit the brothels to accomplish this feat. European women are kind and loving creatures as long as they are in their native habitat. Bring them to America, and they turn into frigid sexless bitches like their American sisters. Must be the water over here or something!

D'oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was having a pretty good Christmas until this news hit... :(

Re:D'oh.

[arth1]

I was having a pretty good Christmas until this news hit... :(

s/s h/ sh/

Think of it in a positive way. It'll save a lot of money that otherwise would be spent analysing the signals and coming up with conclusive evidence that Mars has rocks on it.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:D'oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably want to tighten up that regexp; I doubt he "wa shaving" a pretty good Christmas.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Faust7]

Flight managers ... said they had narrowed Beagle-2's likely landing area to an ellipse just 30 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers long

Yes. All over that area.

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[NeoThermic]

its an elipse, but for quick maths, lets call it a retangle...
that leaves them with what? 150 square kilometers to find a nice little probe of all but a few meters across when unfolded? Pin in a haystak if you ask me.

Hopefully it will spring to life like pathfinder did (or has everyone forgot the 20ish hours where pathfinder looked dead?) And once it does, we can all be happy that it made one of the most long haul journies that you can make...
(thank god there were no kids on it repeatidly saying 'Are we there yet' every mile or so...)

If martians have got our little probe, hopefully they are smart enough to be able to hack our wi-fi from their Mars base and have enough time to look at slashdot; if so, would you please flip the batteries round so that the probe works? ;)

NeoThermic

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Tablizer]

Hopefully it will spring to life like pathfinder did (or has everyone forgot the 20ish hours where pathfinder looked dead?)

Do you mean right after the landing? Or when the rover had modem problems? I don't remember any com problem reports just after landing.

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Natchswing]

> would you please flip the batteries round so that the probe works? ;)

You know my boss wouldn't find that funny at all. A few years ago he worked on a joint project between the US and the USSR - a satellite named Skipper. Russians didn't believe in testing their flight hardware, only shadow building an identical one to destructively test. Skipper's solar panels were wired reverse of the battery so every rotation of the satellite the voltage would drop significantly and never quite come back up. Within' a minute or two the craft had shorted the batteries to the point the electronics no longer functioned.

He says it remains in its 800km orbit, mocking him every 45 minutes. According to my calculations it should only mock him every 101 minutes.

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Trikenstein]

Flight managers ... said they had narrowed Beagle-2's likely landing area to an ellipse just 30 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers long

Yes. All over that area.

Beagle2: Greetings Martians, I come in pieces

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[linuxghoul]

offtopic, responding to your sig: why not just use associative arrays if u want named parameters? and i have been waiting for true OO in PHP...i like it :)

hth,

Ghoul

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[jrockway]

Actually the area of an elipse is quick math too. Area = a*b*Pi where a is the long radius and b is the short radius, so to speak. Note that a circle's long radius and short radius are the same, hence A = r*r*Pi, A=Pi*r^2, the formula we all (should!) know. Now we can all know the more general case.

Sorry to be a math nazi :)

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Keebler71]

quick math? The equation for the area of an ellipse is pi*a*b. Hardly more difficult to calculate than the area of a rectanlge. To remember it, it helps to notice that for the special case where a = b, we have a circle, which has the familiar equation A = pi*r^2. So the answer is closer to 118 km^2.

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[ers81239]

This is up there with the funniest comments ever on slashdot........how can it not be modded funny yet?

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars...

[Tablizer]

offtopic, responding to your sig: why not just use associative arrays if u want named parameters? and i have been waiting for true OO in PHP...i like it :)

Associative arrays take up too much syntax to use as named params IMO. I like my code to-the-point. As far as your liking of OO, I never figured out why some like it so much. When they try to explain it, odd vague descriptions come out of their mouth.

Another Triumph

[glomph]

for the Martian Air Defenses!

(Wonder if they buy their flying-saucer fuel from Halliburton?)

Re:Another Triumph

[arth1]

for the Martian Air Defenses!

Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons, perhaps?

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Another Triumph

[SurgeonGeneral]

(Wonder if they buy their flying-saucer fuel from Halliburton?)

There are a number of people that may not get this joke. I will go ahead and explain it to them because, while being quite funny, its important that everyone know why.

Halliburton, as featured on the Jon Stewart show, has been receiving government contracts since the 1940s. A few years ago Halliburton began making massive oil export contracts with Iraq. Its important because this was during a period when Dick Cheney was at the helm. He still owns 8 million dollars worth of stock and receives undisclosed severence payments from them to the tune of 100,000 to 1 million dollars per year. While we was at the helm of the company he increased their business by a few billion dollars with the help of a few million dollar increase in federal lobby payments to important Republican congressmen.

Thats right, just before the U.S. went to war with Iraq its secretary of state was buying large quantities of oil from them. Once he got into office he left his post at Halliburton, but then offered them a contract to help "rebuild" Iraq.

Yeah, thats right, he left a corporation that was buying oil from Iraq, helped orchestrate a war on Iraq, then offered said corporation part of the contract to "rebuild" Iraq. All the while that corporation was giving money to the congressmen that would support said war.

So, as you can see, the joke is fairly dark humour that takes off on the fact that government officials often make waste (or in this case war) so their economic counterparts can make money. Very witty, and also worthy of being modded Interesting or Insightful.

btw for more information try google searches like Halliburton+Cheney, Halliburton+Iraq, Halliburton+contract, Halliburton+conspiracy, etc etc

Re:Another Triumph

[M1FCJ]

Wooo... That was a good one... Instrumentality is not my favourite "future". Well, give me Culture's backing any day and I'll take my chances against littul kittons!

They shot another one down

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I think Martians found out what happened to American Natives (American Indians). So they figured they don't want to be annihilated the same way. So they are shooting down the probes. Intelligent life will not try to contact humans. The probes that landed had their cameras pointed to desolate areas to deter humans from thinking about trying to colonize Mars.

2. Perhaps building space probes should be outsourced to India .. better... cheaper etc.. I think?

Re:They shot another one down

[cybpunks3]

Maybe so, but native american immune systems were going to have to adapt eventually anyway.

Are there any people on the early today that are so isolated that if they came into contact with other cultures they'd immediately die off? I don't think so. The world's population of humanity's immune system had to "standardize" so to speak.

Re:They shot another one down

[WindBourne]

Are there any people on the early today that are so isolated that if they came into contact with other cultures they'd immediately die off?

Well, yes. Bugs tend to be regionalized, so when they are carried around, local citizens tend to die off. West nile is not a real big problem in northern africa due to so much exposure in the past. Of course, for the past 2 year, we (the USA) suffered big time with it (east coast 2 years ago and last year, here in colorado and the mountain region). In about 5 years time, that will all abait, but not yet.

Better example is "montizuma's revenge" for americans drinking Mexican water. Mexicans who come here also have the same problem. Both are due to being exposed to new bacteria and/or strains.

One more reason...

[brinticus]

...why a human launch to Mars is not quite ready for prime time. This is very difficult to stomach, seeing how the scientists must be devistated. But it would be much worse if there were humans on the other end of the bad news. My hope now is that the US can get *both* of it's robots down on the surface to make up for this (probable) great loss to science.

-- "Technology is most likely to let you down when you need it most." (Montgomery's axiom)

Re:One more reason...

[kbonin]

I'd have to disagree - one of the basic advantages of sending humans is that if a computer decides to shut off the engines 50m in the air, a human would be smart enough to turn them back on and land the thing.

Remember the first moon landing? Armstrong saw the rocks at the site were too big and numerous, and flew it somewhere safer...

There are advantages to sending humans, and enough lost space missions could pay for one Mars Direct launch...

Re:One more reason...

[mOoZik]

Let's not forget the moon was thoroughly studied by spacecraft before a single person was sent. Also, it had no atmosphere, so there was never the problem of entry and friction and all that good stuff. Of course, a human can possibly take into account factors which the computer might not, but as of now, no manned space re-entry vehicle lands under human control: they're all automated. It is just too much for us to handle.

Re:One more reason...

[babbage]

Also, it had no atmosphere, so there was never the problem of entry and friction and all that good stuff.

That, and it takes a lot less propulsive energy to get a body from Earth to the Moon than it does to get one from Earth to Mars, so there's the whole matter of finding a way to bleed off momentum as you approach Martian orbit and the Martian surface. The atmosphere could actually help a bit there -- consider the aerobraking trick that IIRC was used by Pathfinder -- but then as you say it is also a complication to be dealt with.

In any case the essential point is that getting an object onto the lunar surface is like trying to toss a pebble into a can six feet away, whereas getting one onto the martian surface is like trying to get a pebble into a somewhat bigger, but also submerged, can that's (say) a mile away.

++++

Random thought: wasn't Columbia on auto-pilot when it broke up? Or had they disabled it to try to counteract the abnormal wing friction? I forget, but it seems like a comparison worth considering: on auto-pilot alone, Columbia may have been doomed, but with a human crew they could have at least made an attempt at repairs (especially if we're considering martian travel and they had 18 months of transit time to prepare and make repairs...).

Re:One more reason...

[Penguinshit]

According to analysis of some of the fragmented data recovered after the official "Loss Of Signal", the autopilot was switched off after LOS. Of course, the craft was too far gone at that point to recover. What is impressive and noteworthy is that Columbia pilot David Brown was attempting to regain control of the craft all the way to the end.

Re:One more reason...

[thelexx]

"What is impressive and noteworthy is that Columbia pilot David Brown was attempting to regain control of the craft all the way to the end."

Actually, I think it's sad. He had no chance of regaining control, yet was trying, probably desperately. If he had succeeded, now THAT would have been impressive and noteworthy. As it is, he simply did exactly what his training and instinct to survive would say to do. What else would he have done anyway, bite his nails? Make like the guy in Aliens exclaiming "We're screwed man, we're screwed!" over and over? Yeah, he was a trooper. For even being willing to go up at all really.

Re:One more reason...

[mOoZik]

But you have to be PC and make heroes out of all who tried yet failed miserably. Such is the modern climate.

Re:One more reason...

[Haeleth]

This isn't a matter of political correctness. In Britain we've used the old "it's the taking part that counts" line for far, far longer than the "modern PC climate" has existed.

Those who try and fail are heroes - they're as heroic as those who try and succeed. Let's take a non-PC example - think of the soldier who defends a bridge against hopeless odds. He kills maybe a dozen or so enemies, but then he's cut down. By your definition, he is not a hero! But I think you would find your view in the minority.

Re:One more reason...

[id09542]

For cost of a manned landing, we could send 100 probes. With a 50% loss ratio we could have 50 probes operating collecting information from all over the planet. A manned landing is only useful for political consumption on Earth.

Re:One more reason...

[thelexx]

That soldier has a choice - run, hide, surrender, suicide, etc. Not doing those things is heroic. The pilot had no option.

You know...

[Faust7]

It's looking more and more as if the Martians have installed a "lander-zapper," much akin to our bug-zappers.

*BZZZT!*

"Whoo! That was a good one, Earl-tar."
"Yeah, the ones from that northern continent sure seem to burn good."

Re:You know...

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

No more missile defense jokes! it wasn't funny the first time, so why would it be funny the 500000000'th time? come on! do all these people think they're copying eachother, or are they all "original"? *HEAVY SARCASM*

Just what I always wanted

[Bishop, Martin]

What a bunch of nice guys those british are, giving the martians millions of dollars worth of useless, broken equipment, and I thought only Bill Gates did such things.

Next time, test it first!

[mekkab]

From This guy from MetaFilter: It probably will fail.

The balloons used to cushion the fall were never tested. The original balloons failed testing and they didn't have time to test the replacements.


Wow! Sounds like the way to run a space program.

Re:Next time, test it first!

[fname]

Sounds like a pretty strong claim, but I don't understand why anyone should accept it on face value. Is there any reference for this claim? Or is he an insider that is smuggling out this info? But from reading that comment, I don't see any reason why it should be believed. Any more info?

Re:Next time, test it first!

[Flozzin]

No his claim is founded. Sorry I didn't provide a link. But the BBC reported the same thing. The original balloons failed and due to those dang Europeans being those cheap bastards we know they are, they decided not to give anymore money to the project. So the replacements went untested.

Logically it makes sense, Why spend an extra 1 billion to ensure they have a working probe, when they could just instead, waste the 50 billion already spent and send the POS untested?? ( those numbers are most likely wrong...just making a point..)

Re:Next time, test it first!

[pipingguy]

Wow! Sounds like the way to run a space program.

The lesson here kids, is, "never try"

- Homer Simpson

Re:Next time, test it first!

[fname]

OK, I found a reference to this at the BBC website. Sounds like they tested them to some degree, but maybe not as much as they would have liked. If that's the case, they probably figured the airbags would work and assigned it a risk rating (baseline/low/low-medium/medium) and continued. Since Mars missions have a very narrow launch window, they likely needed to make a decision whether to delay the mission for 2+ years, or to launch without a complete testing regimen. If that's what happened, it's a tough call, not necessarily an indictment of the program management.

Re:Next time, test it first!

[evilmrhenry]

Wow! Sounds like the way to run a space program.

Of course, they are hampered by the location of Mars, giving them a deadline written in stone. With this in mind, it is quite possible that one of the components got behind schedule, and did not receive proper testing.

Re:Next time, test it first!

[curious.corn]

Well, as much as a shame a Beagle fizzle can be, it's not THAT much of a tragedy after all. As another poster observes, having a very narrow launch window requires playing against odds; and most importantly there aren't any astronauts roasting their asses because of budget cuts! (damn politicians & bureaucrats) So, if the Beagle landing site is another neat martian crater that's fine... but I'm still chilling for Columbia.

What OS is running it?

[eforhan]

Maybe it's suffering from the BSOD and no one is there to hit ctrl-alt-del?

Re:What OS is running it?

[Loadmaster]

Or maybe it's waiting for someone to hit the "any" key.

Signal degradation

[cybermace5]

Seems like the Beagle team should have coughed up the cash for a Monster Cable surge protector.

Re:Signal degradation

[cybermace5]

You're supposed to follow the link, to get to the funny.

Suggestion: Venus

[argoff]

I myself am a fan of going to Venus instead - one advantage is that it would be alot softer to land a balloon in the upper atmosphere of venus than on mars. But my main motivation is that I think Venus would be more suitable for human habitation.

Venus (in the upper atmosphere) has nearly the same temperature, air pressure, gravity, and light as earth. Even though it has a lot of sulfuric acid (and CO2) - that is a lot easier to deal with than the cold hard vacume rock of Mars. With enough energy - lots of water, air, and carbon byproducts would be readially available. In addition, it is my understanding that a balloon of regular air would float on its own weight.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[Megor1]

Uh Mars has an atmosphere...

And probes have been sent to Venus in the past, guess what happens when you put a probe in sulpheric acid? It lasts about 23 minutes before being destroyed ( http://www.solarspace.co.uk/venus.htm )

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[SharpFang]

Venus is what Earth used to be, before first life. Mars is what Earth may be in millions of years. The future of Mars is long gone, the future of Venus is yet to be.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[argoff]

And probes have been sent to Venus in the past, guess what happens when you put a probe in sulpheric acid? It lasts about 23 minutes before being destroyed

That article was ambiguious, but other information I read indicated that the reason that the probe immediately failed was becasue of the 400C temperature on the surface. I would not recommend a presence on the surface either.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[blincoln]

This is your space probe on Earth, then on Venus.

I wish I could find the sequence I saw in an old astronomy textbook of mine. It was four or five photos, and by the fifth one, the visible parts of the lander had been reduced to a pile of slag.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[mOoZik]

Even with modern technology, it would be impossible to land and study Venus for extended periods, as the pressures would simply crush and melt the craft within hours, if not minutes. It is a cruel mistress, in fact, more so than Mars.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[cheekyboy]

Dunno, even steel melts at 1500+, so a steel made capsule/lander would not MELT like jelly at 800c.

The acid might eat away at it, but making a 100% modern craft that melts at say 1800+ and can withstand the acid would'nt be too hard to make. Note that also high presure does keep things from melting too at its normal temps.

Again, what you need is 100% detectable real time diagnositcs, if RF is too hard, use a visible spread 20W laser pointing back to earth or something. Even launch a few fuzzy flares every 1minute to touch down with different colors so that they could be easily picked up the orbiting sats. Why they didnt do a UHF transmition of its status during reentry? Perhaps also these sats should use more bluetooth like comms as backups if wires burn/break or fail with in the craft between components/cams/antennaes.

hmm as they say, back to the drawing board.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[PinkyGigglebrain]

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about the same as being 21 miles above the surface of Earth, IIRC. At that pressure you are effectivly in a vacume as far as things like humans are concerned.

Venus on the other hand has an atmospheric pressure of about 90ATM, or aprox. 1305LPS per square inch, thats more pressure than being under 2900 feet of water. Making a probe that can withstand that is not difficult, we do it all the time in marine exploration. The killer is the heat, once the probe is on the surface it starts to heat up to the 400C of the surounding air, the solder melts, resisters change values, basicly the probe gets roasted. The Russian probes that made it to the surface had been cooled to well below 0C before they where dropped. No cooling system yet devised can maintain a 400C tempature differance, all cooling works by "pumping heat" from one place to the next.

As pointed out the upper atmospher of Venus is much cooler, a simple hot air baloon could stay aloft for months if it had a nuclear heater to keep it floating.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[Bendebecker]

Actually, Venus is not what Earth was once like. It is what Earth could have been like. At some point in the distant past, when the condensation from volcanic activity etc collected to form Earth's oceans, Venus's water evaporated (due to the slightly higher temperature due to its closer proximity to the sun.) The CO2(i think) that remains trapped in limestone and in the oceans of earth on venus evaportaed and combined with other gases to form its super thick atmosphere. The dense clouds insulated the planet and caused the further evaporation of moisture on the planet until it was all gone. At which point Venus was trapped in a runaway greenhouse effect - dense clouds cuase high pressure, heat is kept in and absorbed from the sun, acid rain constanly falls, evaportaes immediately only to fall again. Venus is what could have been and isn't (and hopefully won't be.) Mars is a possible future.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

Are you even vaguely familiar with the Soviet missions to Venus? the electronics literally disolved... the sulfur was so thick that it corroded steel.

Re:Suggestion: Venus

[SharpFang]

The CO2(i think) that remains trapped in limestone and in the oceans of earth

Nope. It forms the O2 in atmosphere plus all the C-based lifeforms.
The acids form environment where DNA and simple proteins get "synthetised".
Earth could have looked very much alike when first lifeforms were born. Yes, it was -as- unfriendly.

Re:Its CHRISTMAS, you smelly nerds!

[3vi1]

> I bet you're all virgins.

Shhhh.... Don't tell my kids.

No signal?

[leeum]

So I guess main screen no turn on?

USS Reliant Spotted in Orbit

[Michael.Forman]

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:
KHAAAN!

(Obscure Star Trek reference craves moderation of the Funny type from hip Gen-Xer with a softspot for nostalgia.)
Michael.

Re:USS Reliant Spotted in Orbit

[Ilan Volow]

NASA Administrator: So, what the hell happened to our probe?

NASA Scientist: We think that it got sucked through a black hole and got seriously upgraded by omnipotent living machines. We'll probably see it again in several hundred years when it returns as an entity called B'agel that threatens to destroy the earth in it's question for knowledge. Hey, it could happen...

Re:USS Reliant Spotted in Orbit

[Loadmaster]

B'agel? Quest for knowledge or just a strawberry cream cheese spread?

Re:USS Reliant Spotted in Orbit

[sirsnork]

Except as other have stated, this mission had nothing to do with NASA, is was English

Wow, they have truly adopted the NASA model...

[phillymjs]

...of simply crossing their fingers and hoping everything works out for the best.

~Philly

Re:Wow, they have truly adopted the NASA model...

[mantera]

sounds like a typical british attitude

Re:Wow, they have truly adopted the NASA model...

[sznupi]

And this attitude is called humour...british one, to be exact.

Re:I'm really not too surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

When will the Europeans learn to just partnerize with the US instead of misunderestimating us...

Yeah, and we could teach them a thing or two about grammar too.

5 watts...Crazy

[MrFreezeBU]

From the article, Beagle is only broadcasting a 5 watt signal. Quick calculation..5 watts power output with a free space path loss of ~200db means that the amount of power reaching the Lovell dish is roughly 1/5x10^-66 of a watt.. I'm blown away that they are able to pick that out of the backgound noise at all.

Links
Free Space path loss

Nifty WLAN link calculator

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[LiquidCoooled]

Beagle is fitted with state of the art, top of the range Pringles tin....

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[OOGG_THE_CAVEMAN]

OOGG want correct calculation.

5 watt = +7 dBW (dB REFERRED WATT. 0 dBW BE 1 WATT)

200 dB PATH LOSS reduce power -193 dBW.

= 5 * 10^-20 WATT.

OOGG NOT FIND GOOD INFO ON ANTENNA, FREQUENCY OF BEAGLE RF. NO FREQUENCY INFO MEAN OOGG NOT CHECK FREE SPACE LOSS CALCULATION)

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 60s (the peak era for electronics IMHO) 'they' were able to suck signals from space with a signal level of -160dBm and amplify them with a doohickey called a 'parametric amplifier', a really neat idea that consists of varying the capacity of a diode junction with a pump signal to get voltage gain. Ah, the 60s, when you could make things out of a single diode and land people on the moon with it.
And now in 2003 we can't even equal that with billions of transistors on an IC... Sad, really.
There isn't much on the net about parametric amplifiers sadly. Better hit the libraries and look for mouldy oldies, I have a great book with descriptions of the circuitry used for tracking Pioneer probes.

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Loadmaster]

ESA:
What, we put a 5 watt transmitter in there? What happened to the 1.21 gigawatt transmitter?
A Delorean?
Flux Capacitor?
88 miles per hour?
Well, Ok, then.

Screw Mars, when can I hit the ancient Roman vomitorium?

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Old tube-based receivers also tend to be quieter due to the lack of digital switching noise.

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Kyro]

from the Beagle2 site:

Communication frequency:

Forward (Earth - Mars): 437MHz

Return (Mars - Earth) 401MHz

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[hcg50a]

I'm blown away that they are able to pick that out of the backgound noise at all.

Um, they haven't picked it up. The intent was for the orbiter to pick it up, not earth-based antennas.

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Detritus]

Parametric amps are still widely used in satellite ground stations. JPL's DSN (Deep Space Network) has even better toys, like hydrogen masers.

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Voyager 1 and 2 only have about 8 watts of transmitter power.

I remember Carl Sagan once saying something about the total amount of energy reaching the earth as radio waves from radio sources in space, including space probes, being equivilant to the energy of a single snowflake hitting the ground. Why else would radio telescopes be so fracking big?

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Mr2cents]

Indeed, this world needs more KISSing. However, back in the 60s, a diode was High-Tech, dude! How are you going to convince politicians that your diode-based space-probe has the potential for finding new things, and creating some spin-offs etc.

BTW, besides KISS, Divide And Conquer should also be part of an engineer's mantra collection. There obviously is a problem in landing on Mars, so this should be the main focus of any mission. Once this is solved, we can take the next step. Maybe we should be sending very simple probes (nothing more than a radio and perhaps a camera) but send lots of them with all kinds of landing mechanisms. Dare to spend money on launching a dozen of landers! I would also let the guys who designed the black box create the housing of the radio; getting landing information back is crucial in this kind of experiment.

But then again, who said Beagle has crashed? We'll have to play the waiting game a bit longer I'm afraid.

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, and the only craft designed for communication with Beagel is Mars Express. See: http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMRT9374OD_index_ 0.html

The option that Mars Odysse or the Jodrell Banks telescope could pick up Beagels signals where "by chance" anyway.

Mars Express will be ready to pick up Beage in about 10 to 14 days depending on how good/fast the orbit corrections work.

So don't declare Beagel dead, just because the first options to pick him up had a low chance anyway and did not succeede so far.

angel'o'sphere

Re:5 watts...Crazy

[Josh Booth]

I knew that slashdotters had bad writting, but you certainly take the cake. I'm surprised you made it past the lameness filter, although your post is rather informative.

No...No...No...

[Nazmun]

It's definately the Odyssey's onboard missle system which fired as soon as the thing went overhead. NASA didn't want the British to find our super secret martian underground lab.

Re:No...No...No...

[McAddress]

thats our secret martian lair. mhawhahaha

I have hope...

[mOoZik]

Not that having hope will somehow change the fate of the lander, but I think we shouldn't all discount the very probable circumstance that it survived. I truly hope it has survived the landing.

Re:I have hope...

[DerekLyons]

Not that having hope will somehow change the fate of the lander, but I think we shouldn't all discount the very probable circumstance that it survived.

It's actually very *improbable* that it survived landing. The original airbag design failed it's single test, and the slightly modified design that was flown, was never tested.

Twin deployment?

[gad_zuki!]

Considering how bad the track record of landing something on Mars is, wouldn't it make lots of sense to build satellites with two or more identical landers? The engineerining and design is already done with the landers so it wouldn't cost as much as building a whole seperate mission and it would add fault tolerance if one of them fails to land.

Or maybe NASA and the EU can pitch in a build a giant craft that will carpet-bomb Mars with landers. Mars Air Defense won't stand a chance.

Re:Twin deployment?

[mOoZik]

So when something prior to descent goes wrong, both landers die? Remember that quite a few have died on their way to Mars and not during landing. That includes failing to reach Earth orbit, failing to travel to Mars, failing to get into Mars orbit, ed cetera.

Re:Twin deployment?

[Flozzin]

Yes money does go to the engineerining and design. But they also build these landers in extremely clean environments. There can be absolutly no bacteria or microbes of any sort. The rovers are swabbed constantly and tested for any sort of bacteria. Also the rooms they build them in are cleaned often. So its much more expensive then just throwing some high tech gadgets on some RC Racer bought from radio shack.

Re:Twin deployment?

[Locutus233]

How about an Orbital Assault from a Go'uld mothership. Then use hetacs to shuttle the Gafa down to the surface?

Calling all Bookies!

[segment]

Flurry of bets on life in Mars
Vijay Dutt
London,

Bookmakers in London were biting their nails with nervousness as Beagle 2 approached the touch down on Mars. On Tuesday Ladbrokes cut the odds on the mission discovering life there after a flurry of bets.

Ladbrokes received many large bets following successful separation of the lander from its mother ship, Mars Express, on Friday. Others too reportedly similar increase in number of bets.

Proof of life on Mars would leave the bookmaker liable for a huge payouts on wagers placed with them. Warren Lush, a Ladbrokes spokesman was quoted saying that odds on finding evidence of life on Mars were being reduced from 33-1 to 25-1 after facing a potential payout of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He conceded that the odds did not represent the true odds on finding life on the planet but the price was shortened because of the liabilities of hundreds of thousands of pounds. " We first took money for Mars life on Mars back in 1969 and would be looking at a black hole in our accounts if Beagle 2 discovers something," the spokesman told the Times.

Colin Pillinger, professor of Planetary Sciences at the Open University and Beagle's lead scientist has not placed any bet. He feels it would be like insider trading.

Meanwhile, Sir Patrick Moore writing in the Mirror said we would know after a few hours if there is some form of life on Mars, 34,500,000 miles away from us. There are craters, old riverbeds, canyons, valleys and volcanoes, the Olympus Mars being three times higher than the Everest.

The scientists are agog with the expectation that signals from Beagle 2 could confirm life forms even if it was very lowly.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_507223,0005 .htm

Re:Calling all Bookies!

[AndroidCat]

Colin Pillinger, professor of Planetary Sciences at the Open University and Beagle's lead scientist has not placed any bet. He feels it would be like insider trading.

Insider? Only if he was a Martian. .. .. Hey, wait a minute!

However...

[skinfitz]

Bear in mind that they were not even sure that Jodrell Bank would be able to pick up the signal. This was only conjecture and has never been tested.

There is a window every day now to pick up a signal via NASA's Odyssey, and if for any reason that there is a problem with comms protocols between Beagle2 and Odyssey (this was never tested due to time constraints) then Mars Express will come online on Jan 4th 2004 which does know how to talk to Beagle2.

Re:I know why

[sbergman2]

Actually Lunix *is* and OS. It stands for "Little Unix" and runs on the Commodore 64.

Re:Its CHRISTMAS, you smelly nerds!

[3vi1]

Oh geez.. I've been so totally ranked by an anonymous coward who is obviously a master of wit and prose and must be one handsome devil too, judging from the raking which he gave me! Oh, the humility! Did I mention you're a moron?

Re:I'm really not too surprised

[juglugs]

Parle Vous Englais? "Nobody has ever lost money betting against the intelligence of the American public"

Re:I know why

[3vi1]

If the original poster knew this, I hereby donate my left kidney. Well, maybe he did and wasn't just drunk. You learn something new every day.

Re:Its CHRISTMAS, you smelly nerds!

[Fancia]

Your hand doesn't count. ;b

Jordell Bank confirms: Beagle2 is dying!

[SharpFang]

It is now official - Jordell Bank has confirmed: Beagle2 is dying

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Mars exploration community when recently ESA confirmed that Beagle2 accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of chances for survival. Coming on the heels of the latest Jordell Bank signal analysis which plainly states that Beagle2 has lost radio contact, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Beagle2 is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent radiotelescope comprehensive signal search.

You don't need to be a Aldrin to predict Beagle2's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Beagle2 faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Beagle2 because Beagle2 is dying. Things are looking very bad for Beagle2. As many of us are already aware, Beagle2 continues to lose power. Red dust covers it like a river of blood. The lander rover is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core systems. The sudden and unpleasant failures of long time rover systems of traction and cameras only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Beagle2 is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

All major surveys show that Beagle2 has steadily declined in survival chances. Beagle2 is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Beagle2 is to survive at all it will be among martian hobbyist junk collectors. Beagle2 continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Beagle2 is dead.

Fact: Beagle2 is dead

Re:Jordell Bank confirms: Beagle2 is dying!

[Goth Biker Babe]

If it is dead (which is still a big 'if') then I won't be saddened. If the Europeans had decided to help us in Iraq, I might be thinking differently - but the major contributors to the project (as funding is based on GDP) -- France and Germany -- I feel little for their inherent failure.

Beagle 2 itself was a British project and I kind of remember that we had a fairly significant input in to the recent Iraq war. For one Blair was a useful translator of Shrub to English.

Re:Jordell Bank confirms: Beagle2 is dying!

[Jafafa Hots]

Guess I'll burn a little karma here. Good god, you're a fucking idiot.

Re:Jordell Bank confirms: Beagle2 is dying!

[adrianbaugh]

For one thing, it's predominantly a British probe. For another: what on earth is the connection between a space program and a war? Or are you going to bitch about everything done by every country that didn't support the war?

maybe...

[breman]

Maybe the Beagle 2 is working fine, with exception to the communication link. I guess this would be just as well, but it still leaves hope to contact it in the future.

Re:maybe...

[AKnightCowboy]

Maybe the Beagle 2 is working fine, with exception to the communication link. I guess this would be just as well, but it still leaves hope to contact it in the future.

This is why I never liked the idea of colocating a machine in one of those remote data centers that are hundreds of miles away from you. Sure, most of the time you expect the box to work, but if it goes tits up you've got a hell of a long way to drive/fly to fix it.

Why space is expensive

[fname]

Well, this episode goes to show you why space programs cost so much. As a prior poster pointed, Beagle was much cheaper that Viking landers. The quote I saw was $1 billion for Viking and $62 million for Beagle, although that $62 million is a bit fictitious since it piggybacked a ride to Mars on Mars Express, so the real cost may have been higher.

But let's say it cost $200 million. Let's say the Brits managed to send 5 identical models 1 year apart, and 2 worked fine. Would anyone be celebrating 2 successful landers for the price of 1 Viking? Nope, instead there would be an outcry about how the space program wastes money by destroying 3 $200 million missions.

So what do the managers do? Well, NASA had a couple high-profile disasters and a couple resounding successes. Pathfinder got a lot of ink, but NASA was held up to a lot of ridicule for its failure of the failed trips. After skipping the 2001 window for flights to Mars, in 2003 NASA & JPL sent 2 very expensive (think $400-600 million each) landers to Mars. Hopefully, both will be successful. If both fail, it may indicate that they just got lucky with Pathfinder and airbags aren't the way to go.

Oh, why did they cost so much more than Pathfinder & Beagle (keeping in mind that $400-600 million includes launch, the trip to Mars, the craft itself & the management of the program)? I'm sure it's because things were checked more thoroughly, the JPL managers were more conservative, and every problem that came up was fully addressed.

On the other hand, APL seemed to have a fairly poor approach to system architecture, as can be seen by reading the NASA inquiry into the Contour mishap. The APL investigation fixed blame quickly without making a thorough investigation. The full report dug into the cause a lot more thoroughly & made a much more likely assessment,

The CONTOUR Board concludes that the probable proximate cause for loss of the CONTOUR spacecraft was overheating of the forward-end of the spacecraft due to base heating from the SRM exhaust plume. The CONTOUR SRM nozzle was embedded within the spacecraft to a greater degree than is typical (Fig. 3), and the resultant near-field effect of exhaust plume heating was not adequately accounted for in the design. Overheating may have caused substantial material weakening and structural degradation, which could have led to catastrophic dynamic instability.

So why is space expensive? Almost every spacecraft (as opposed to satellites or launch vehicle) is essentially designed for 1 or 2 time use, and all the parts need to work, and, as highlighted above, need to work well together. That requires real engineering work involving analysis, research, testing and comparison to heritage programs. If you want to go from 50% to 90% reliability, you probably triple your costs (at least).

I hope they find Beagle. But landing a complex science instrument on a distant planet is difficult, and occasional failure is to be expected. If someone figures out a way to do it very well & very cheap, these missions may become as routine as a satellite launch. Maybe it'll be NASA or the ESA or some small entrepreneur. Good luck to them all!

Re:Why space is expensive

[mOoZik]

It seems mod points are directly related to post length. Shame.

Re:Why space is expensive

[Tablizer]

The APL investigation fixed blame quickly without making a thorough investigation.

How is that any different than any other large beurocracy? You can't expect NASA to be better managed than other like-size organizations. I have worked in enough different organizations to know that small ones are ruined by marketers and large ones are ruined by bumbling beurocrats, and those in between are ruined by both. Same as it ever was.

Re:Why space is expensive

[csirac]

I find it hilarious that you can speculate the quality of the Beagle or any other mission based entirely on money spent.

Re:Why space is expensive

[Johnny Mnemonic]

So why is space expensive? Almost every spacecraft (as opposed to satellites or launch vehicle) is essentially designed for 1 or 2 time use

I think that's an interesting point, and begs the question: why don't they uber-test a modular lander, and then amortize the cost of the initial testing by reusing the design many many times? Certainly each mission is going to have different goals, including different landing sites, but why does it seem like they reinvent the wheel every time they make an attempt?

Re:Why space is expensive

[AllynM]

The CONTOUR Board concludes that the probable proximate cause for loss of the CONTOUR spacecraft was overheating of the forward-end of the spacecraft due to base heating from the SRM exhaust plume. The CONTOUR SRM nozzle was embedded within the spacecraft to a greater degree than is typical (Fig. 3), and the resultant near-field effect of exhaust plume heating was not adequately accounted for in the design. Overheating may have caused substantial material weakening and structural degradation, which could have led to catastrophic dynamic instability.

Translation: the shit's broken

Re:Why space is expensive

[Glock27]

The quote I saw was $1 billion for Viking and $62 million for Beagle, although that $62 million is a bit fictitious since it piggybacked a ride to Mars on Mars Express, so the real cost may have been higher.

I found a quoted cost of $375 million here.

If adjusted for inflation, though, the cost of Beagle does come out to about $100 million in 1976 dollars.

What does this mean? I'd say a few things. First of all, Viking was a much larger lander, as it had to be in 1976 since miniaturization was much less further along. Viking was the first attempt, so much more basic research went into that effort. Beagle was able to leverage all the space related research in the intervening 27 years or so, which should have lowered costs considerably.

Of course, the bottom line is that Viking worked, which made it an infinitely better investment.

All in all, a poor showing for current space technology.

Perhaps the next American probe will fare better.

Damn shame...

[moniker_21]

While I'm not ready to write off Beagle 2 just yet, this is certainly disapointing. I couldn't think of a better gift on this Christmas for all of humanity then the furthering of our knowlege of the red planet. Here's to hoping the holiday season has one more miracle left in store by way of a nine note Blur song eminating from Mars.

And in other news...

[HangingChad]

...the Martian Ambassador today announced their intent to "bust a cap in somebody's ass" if the "Earth folk" dropped another lander on them. The ambassador went on to claim the latest attempt to land a scientific instrument package on the Red Planet actually hit his personal vehicle.

"Look what dey did to my damn car!" the ambassador, disguised as a homeless psychotic person in downtown Memphis, TN, insisted. "I'll kick their ass. Dropin' landers and shit all over. Look at that mess!"

The ambassador refused further questions regarding a possible response from Mars, saying only that somebody owed him "a new damn car."

Strange Solitary message!

[npendleton]

A well placed insider leaked that the Mission Control Team did receive a solitary message from the Beagle CPU. The solitary message was "Daisy....Daisy.....Give me your answer due.....I'm half-crazy....all for the love of you...."

Mission control has launched an intensive inquiry to determine who "Daisy" is, and why she was tampering with the Beagle CPU (model HAL 9000).
Expect further updates as they come in.
=)

-Mac refugee, Paper MCSE, Linux wanna be

(yes I know it was a joke)

[oobar]

3. Mars is damn hard to land on.

Re:Mod me down.

[juglugs]

No, we agree with you - that's the thing about community posts - the majority get the voice... ONLY IF WE ARE THE MAJORITY!

Patiently waiting

[vt0asta]

There is no reason to bash the Europeans as a whole as they like to do Americans. Comments I seem to remember... "if NASA would stop hurling probes like lawn darts they'd actually get somewhere", etc... Let's try to show the Europeans a little sympathy, and try to be humble about our own successes and failures.

ESA had to know it was going to be hard to pull off a Mars landing, two countries (US, Russia) with a hell of a lot more experience have had difficulty with the same task. A blow to thier pride, yes, but the results in my opinion were not unexpected.

Re:Patiently waiting

[Gorimek]

There is no reason to bash the Europeans as a whole as they like to do Americans.

What an odd way to bash Europeans...

Re:Patiently waiting

[Darby]

exactly. we have a common goal (space exploration). why do we have to be patriotism and politics into this?

The word is Jingoism. It's basically the opposite of patriotism.

Re:Patiently waiting

[BasilBrush]

There is no reason to bash the Europeans as a whole as they like to do Americans.

There's nothing wrong with Canadians, Panamanians or Brazilians.

Screenshot

[Kent Recal]

Here comes the obligatory screenshot.

I got it

[Tablizer]

Maybe they should put some aluminum foil on the antenna. It works for our TV's rabbit ears.

Re:santa, green men on mars. must be a conspiracy

[mOoZik]

Actually, Jesus wasn't born on the 25th of December, but rather, it was a special day (IIRC, of the birth) for the pre-Christian religion known as the Cult of Mithras. However, to divert attention away from it and to erase it from history, Christians inlaid upon it what we have come to know as Christmas.

Re:I'm really not too surprised

[gordgekko]

I think you meant: Parlez vous Anglais?

"Nobody has ever lost money betting against the intelligence of the American public"

Remind me again where David Hasselhoff is popular?

Re:Slashdot sucks again

[McAddress]

Jodrell Bank. hmm sounds like jar-jar binks. uh oh.

They are getting desparate

[Tablizer]

I found a picture of the probe on the back of a milk carton.

Re:Its CHRISTMAS, you smelly nerds!

[Crypto Gnome]

For most slashdotters, if it weren't for their hands, they couldn't count.

take it as you read it :-)

Hexadecimal please?

[Thinkit3]

You do know geeks hate decimal, right?

So, when are we going to Mars?

[hcg50a]

Given the failure rate of Mars probes over the last 40 years, I'm surprised anyone thinks there's a reasonable chance of sending people there within 10 years.

Re:So, when are we going to Mars?

[silentbozo]

I have no doubt that we could send people there. After all, having a couple of human operators on the spot could do a lot to compensate for unknowns that might prove disasterous when diagnosed and treated over a long distance radio link. The problem isn't getting people there - it's getting them back in one piece.

The astronauts that go will be isolated for longer than any other space explorers, and out of range of any possible resupply or rescue attempt. Like the explorers of old, they'll need to rely on pre-cached supplies in order to make it back, while hazarding radiation, space dust, low-gravity, and the risks of landing on a planet that we still don't know very much about.

Let's get a couple of Lagrange refuling/resupply depots set up, and a Moonbase. Then we can talk about shipping men and women off to Mars, not to die, but to further human knowledge and enterprise.

.... In Other News

[Crypto Gnome]

PETA heard on the grapevine that ESA was killing beagles, in the pursuit of space exploration.

Expect a strongly worded denunciation and protest march later this week.

You may not be far off

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious idea that the machine crashed for some reason is getting a lot of /. attention. But there are other reasons we haven't heard from the Beagle.

It would be really tragic if it was something as stupid as the clock being seriously off - for example, thinking it was daytime when it was the middle of the night. I would hope that the programmers thought of the possibility that the clock could get scrambled and somehow incorporated the solar cell's charging cycles into resetting the clock. That is, if the Beagle thinks it's the middle of the night but the solar cells are delivering juice, the clock is obviously wrong so time to reset the clock. No use trying to phone home if home is on the other side of the planet.

Self repairing Terminator 3 technology called for

[Testocles]

Maybe they needed to borrow some of that beautiful Terminator 3 girl's liquid metal hands and get her to finger Beagle to turn on. Beagle would be powerless to resist all those fingers pressing all those buttons all at the same time! Seriously...so many missions lost, they should be putting self repair technologies into what are supposed to be bleeding edge probes falling apart with minor issues.

So why not make 50 modular probes?

[cheekyboy]

Can't they learn from every other industry, make a probe like a PC, the basic spec, 100% reliable and perfect for all conditions, make 50/100 of them, at $10m each. Then add new modules for seperate science kits, like different cams, or detectors, or soil analyzers etc... give em all direct multi wire connections and bluetooth. And for gods sake, finally put some windscreen wipers on the solar panels, coz the dust gathers on them and they fail!!! surely some wipers would keep the probs/rovers going for years on end, and if the batteries fail, then at least it will work during day times. Or make a new none-chemical based battery like the spinning wheel gyros, (if they can be made small/light)

Re:So why not make 50 modular probes?

[Rich0]

There are a couple of competing factors with space probes:

1. No space probe is truly "cheap" - it costs millions of dollars to put together even the most rudimentary probe and launch it.

2. When figuring the probability of failure of a complex system you have to multiply the probabilities of the individual parts. So if you have 10 parts which all must work and they all have a 2% chance of failure then your overall probe has a 1-0.98^10 = 18% chance of failure. If you have 100 parts which all must work it is probably worth paying the extra million dollars to make them 99.999% reliable.

Somebody else pointed out that NASA/ESA/etc depend on PR for funding. As a result, it makes more sense to spend a billion dollars a mission with a 100% success rate than $30 million with a 50% success rate (people don't consider it a waste when the mission actually works - but the cheap probes are perceived as wasting $30 million every time they crash - even though on average they only cost $60 per successful mission).

The next one will be long &shaped like a sausa

[Newer Guy]

It's tentative name is: Bassett.

Leave them alone

[Unregistered]

If the Martians wanted to talk to us, they'd have answered our radio communications long ago. It's not nice to then send probes, and once they start shooting them down, the message is pretty obvious. So leave them alone.

last transmission from the beagle

[bbdd]

the craft managed to transmit one final image before the comm links went out.

Re:Slashdot sucks again

[arth1]

Jodrell Bank. hmm sounds like

I was thinking more of the lines of The First Syrian Bank.

Regards,
--
*Art
(For trigger happy modders, the First Syrian Bank has NOTHING to do with Syria, and EVERYTHING to do with planetary exploration. Really.)

Maybe the Beagle was made by Leyland

[DABANSHEE]

& just can't cope with wet weather unless a rubber glove is tied arround it's dizzy, I mean its electronics, & it rained on launch day.

New video game idea

[AsmordeanX]

Martian Lander

Just like Lunar Lander, just 35x harder.

The icing and the cake

[mhw25]

According to the Beeb article,

Mars Express is the major part of the European mission - Beagle was a late add-on - and will search for water, ice and key chemicals buried under the Martian surface.

That is, the lander is not the be all and end all of the ESA mission. After all, Mars Express will be looking for the potential signs of the possibility life on Mars - buried water, ice and chemicals - on a planetwide scale . Beagle will only be a stationary point sampler. I'm finding it strange that all that is being shouted about is the smaller part of the mission probably failed, while the greater whole is more or less working as planned.

I'm not arguing that surface lander is not useful, just that it is not the main focus of this mission. We still have two shots at landers - and these are rovers, not stationary samplers, arriving soon:

Spirit, the first of NASA's identical robot explorers, is expected to land Jan. 3. Its sibling, Opportunity, is scheduled to settle on the opposite side of the planet January 24. CNN

Beagle2 is kind of like the icing on the cake. Even if we lost it, but with Mars Express working we can still have our cake and eat it.

Re:The icing and the cake

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

I don't find it strange at all that people focus on the landers. to the simple mind, landers are cool. I just hope Spirit and Opportunity make it ok. if those astrobots don't make it, we're all screwed.

Re:The icing and the cake

[MtViewGuy]

Hey, at least the Mars Express orbiter is functional and working.

Once it's in its proper orbit (which will take about 4-5 months of propellent burns to adjust the orbit to its final configuration), Mars Express will use its multiple on-board sensors to look at everything on Mars from orbit.

Primarily, I think the orbiter will do the following:

1. Look for underground water by studying the IR emissions from the planet surface.

2. Use its on-board imaging radar to look at subsurface features up to 3,000 meters under the planet surface.

3. Use its stereoscopic-view camera to look at various Martian features.

With these three capabilities, one thing Mars Express might do is the help put the issue of the so-called anomalies of Mars (as proposed by Richard C. Hoagload) to rest. Especially important is the High/Super Resolution Camera (HSRC), which will image surface features in stereoscopic view. It will be very interesting to see what the anomalies of the Cydonia Plain look like from Mars Express orbital imaging using both HSRC and the on-board IR sensors. (Personally, we really won't settle this issue until the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter--which will have extremely high-resolution cameras--arrives at Mars in late 2005.)

Re:The icing and the cake

[mark-t]

Yeah, but the Beagle had a boring machine in it, to dig directly into rock and examine samples of material that we have never had the opportunity to analyze before. Yes, the major part of the mission was successful, but it is nevertheless very sad that the lander may be lost.

Re:The icing and the cake

[MtViewGuy]

The "Face on Mars" has already been definitively debunked.

I would most likely agree with your assessment, but let's have independent, verifiable proof from the ESA-controlled Mars Express using the stereoscopic high-resolution camera and IR imager to finally put this somewhat looney idea to rest once and for all.

Does the Beagle2 antenna move?

[MrJones]

I wonder if the Beagle2 antenna can move to point towards Odyssey or earth.
If not, thats a good upgrade idea for Beagle3 :-)

Shelf Life

[Detritus]

Another problem with liquid fuel rocket engines is making sure they will work after sitting idle many months in a very hostile environment. Fittings can leak, valves can leak or get stuck, propellants can freeze or deteriorate, moisture can cause corrosion or freeze into a plug inside a fuel line.

Re:Shelf Life

[Squid]

That's exactly what happened to the Japanese Mars orbiter Nozumi. Its fuel froze. Repeatedly.

Re:Shelf Life

[the_mad_poster]

Its fuel froze. Repeatedly.

Well, at least it was consistent.

Re:Shelf Life

[ISPpfy]

Didn't one of the recent Mars Orbiters basically explode when they pressurized (heated) the fuel tank prior to it's braking maneuvers? I like the bouncing ball approach, but think it really ought to be backed up by the "really big parachute" approach as well. Redundancy means not having to say that the failure of a USD .25 part killed your multimillion dollar space machine.

Re:Shelf Life

[Detritus]

I think you are referring to the Mars Observer mission.

On August 21, 1993 the spacecraft transmitters were turned off during the final approach to Mars to protect the components against shock from the pressurization sequence. After the transmitter was turned off the tanks were supposed to be pressurized and then the transmitters turned back on and communications with Earth resumed, but no further signals were ever received on Earth.

NASA Planetary FAQ

MOD UP

[SuperKendall]

Hey, this is the most useful and informitive post here!! That brings a lot more hope than I had before.

Has everyone forgotten about the solar flares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has everyone completely forgotten about the solar flares? They were resposible for the loss of the Japanese mission and affected all the other missions currently on route.

The lattest flares were among the most powerfull ever recorded, so I wouldn't be surprised if Beagle2 systems were affected by the sudden storm of magentically charged particles that came from the sun. Theoretically the probes where supposed to be magnetically shielded against these things but the strength of these lattest flares was way over what is normally expected.

There are a number of possible reasons to why we are not getting any transmissions from it. It's possible that the landing system didn't deploy properly or even at all, or the main system is malfunctioning or simply not working at all as it should after the landing. The probe could have also landed too far from the expected landing site due to the infamous martian storms that plage the planet from time to time or landed in a rocky area and when it opened a boulder may have tilded the radio dish the wrong way.

Mars Express, the orbiter, has yet to reach a stable polar orbit, as it is currently on a very eliptical orbit, but as soon as it does it will use it's high definition cameras to try and locate Beagle2 on the surface. But that's is going to take a while. Until then either we get some kind of message from Beagle or we'll just have to wait.

liberate mars

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know, if this were a US probe, this would be war. How DARE those martians shoot down the probe. They must be nervous about us Earth folk detecting their WMD. People of Earth, WE MUST LIBERATE MARS!!!

P.S.
I will TRULY be amazed/stupified if this gets modded insightful.

er, no

[rebelcool]

space hardware is considerably different than what you find terrestrially. Mainly because space is a really harsh environment. The part of your craft pointed at the sun may be a +200 degrees. The opposite side might be -200. And if you turn the craft around, you'll be creating one hell of a thermal shock. This affects everything from any grease you may have in folding joints to simple soldering connections that can break from the rapid expansion/contraction.

Then there is radiation - space is full of it. And if you have a solar storm, god help you. The massive solar storms a few weeks ago are likely what damaged the japanese probe beyond repair.

So you have to factor all these into the design of your craft. Rad-hardened electronics are very expensive to come by and build. Its virtually all custom work. And even if you build 100 craft, thats still too small an order to have economy of scale prices kick in. Every single component in the craft has to be able to handle the rigors.

That said space probes are *amazingly* robust. Often times something will malfunction and the mission controllers will reload new software on it from billions of miles away on a signal thats only a handful of watts. Other times they can reprogram certain components to do things way outside of their intended use if it will help rescue the probe, or parts of it.

On the other hand, sometimes something as simple as a jammed joint or slipped screw can wreck the whole thing.

Oops, they did it again.

[ThoreauHD]

Another Mars probe blown out of the sky. How cool is that. Is someone trying to tell us something?

http://yorkshireufoinfo.homestead.com/PhobosPlat fo rm.html

http://www.planetary.org/learn/missions/marsmiss io ns.html

pioneer 10

[rebelcool]

is still faintly available (I believe, if conditions are right). It transmits at 8 watts. And its reached the edge of the solar system.

thats about twice the wattage of an old style car phone.

Re:The next one will be long &shaped like a sa

[PinkyGigglebrain]

The name for the Mark 2 version with a pair of enhanced radio anteneas; Bassalope

I blame the timing of the mission

[Eric MB Lard MD]

Imagine trying to tell your kids that the giant pocket watch that just came hurtling out of the sky isn't from Santa. Some Martian nerd is having the Xmas of his life taking this thing apart. If we're lucky it will start working in a few days time when he puts it back together again.

Re:santa, green men on mars. must be a conspiracy

[Goth Biker Babe]

Yule is the mid winter solstice.

During the first few centuries of Christianity it's celebration was banned by the Pope but everyone ignored it. Who wouldn't ignore the banning of a good piss-up. Then in the fourth century the Pope created Christmyth as a way of subverting the original festival, retaining it and eradicating the original meaning by replacing it with his own propaganda. The date is now 25th December due to calendar changes in the 18th century hence the reason that 12th night is now 6th January and not the first as it used to be.
Christ, as far as anyone can tell, if he existed was born sometime in September. The Solstice celebration is to ensure the rebirth of the year and the sun, hence the relationship with the birth of Christ. The Solstice also signifies the new year.

Modern Christmyth celebrations are about 90% Pagan with a small amount of Christianity overlaid. Evergreens, e.g. Holly, Fir trees, Ivy and Mistletoe or symbolise the hope of life. The feast is for celebration and is related to the old feast of Saturnalia. The colours of red and green relate to the God and Goddess and Santa Claus is a combination of St Nicholas and the Horned God aka Father Christmas who inseminates the Goddess to form the new year.

At this rate

[dalek_killer]

What with all the failed missions to land a probe on Mars, I start to think that the first manned mission won't be the exploration of Mars, but a mission to collect the wreckage of all the failed landers.

I have to say it.

[Lost Penguin]

The Beagle is stranded.

Re:Meanwhile, on Mars at a place called Roswell...

[Skiron]

In 50 years time, the Martians will still be arguing about the event, with the Martian Government denying it was nothing at all except a top secret weather balloon - producing 'balloon like material' as evidence from the original wreckage. All the peculiar metals and strange writing on the wreckage will have disappeared. Nick

Mod Parent Up

[AlistairGroves]

Most usefull link on the entire page

Re:Ah, those Plucky Brits...(off topic)

[panurge]

Greetings to another ex-Triumph owner. However, the problem was largely that BSA preferred to pay its directors and staff inflated salaries, and not pay for a decent electrical system on the bikes. Since Beagle 2 was done on the cheap, we may be seeing the same syndrome.

Mars

[Mir322]

So that's where the Iraqi foreign information minister came from... it explains everything. !

---

Re:Self repairing Terminator 3 technology called f

[DiscoDave_25]

I doubt that a self repairing probe would be much good in this case given that the 'damage' was probably caused by the probe becoming one with the Martian Mesa at a few more m/s than is good for anything. Now if we had nano-tech....

Nice Cup of Tea

[hughk]

I would disagree, as a British probe, it would come back looking for a nice cup of tea. A B'agel with tea......

RF Engineering not Sexy

[hughk]

A frined who graduated a long time ago with EE and specialising with analogue RF design has found it very difficult to get work, even with modern mobile telephone systems (largely digital). It seems that only the military seems to do much work in this area. Techniques like parametric amplifers and MASERs have been around for a while but there definitely not as many people who know how to build them.

Not that bad except for PR

[kippy]

While this is a bummer and very bad PR for Mars exploration, I'm stoked that Mars Express made it. I believe that it's going to be a LOT more useful than Beagle.

This may sound like sour grapes but I don't think the chances of the Beagle finding life were too good to begin with. Being able to figure out where the underground water is on Mars is invaluable. Based on that info, a manned mission will have a very good chance of becoming self sufficient very quickly. Not to mention the fact that if the water news is good, so is the terraformation news.

I just hope that this doesn't set manned missions back another 30 years. Say your prayers for Spirit and Opportunity!

You can not live on Venus.

[A55M0NKEY]

First of all: the atmospheric pressure is crushingly dense ( like 80 atmospheres or something. ) How would you propose to GET RID OF an atmosphere? Any lifeforms you might introduce there to sequester CO2 would have to be able to survive without water ( but plenty of sulfuric acid ) at temps that would melt lead.

Next: Venus unlike Mars has a day that is over 100 Earth days long. This means your side of the planet will face the searing venusian sun for months at a time followed by months of night. This messes up weather needless to say and will make the range of temps you would have to deal with probably unbearable. ( The superthick atmosphere of Venus does probably act like a blanket to keep the night side toasty molten lead warm even at night )

Lastly: There is NO WATER on Venus. Dry as a bone.

Mars is a better prospect of living on

Mars has a day almost the same length as ours

Mars has plenty of water.

Mars' atmosphere is fairly nontoxic

Mars' atmosphere is too thin rather than too thick. Nothing to get rid of, only needs building up.

A few well aimed ice/CO2/rock meteorites aimed at Mars could thicken the atmosphere, thereby warming the place up. Introduced earth life would soon create a biosphere we could tolerate.

Oi you git! Beagle 2 is British!

[reality-bytes]

Thanks a lot matey, we'll remember that - Try to remember that the Beagle 2 is British and the British are Europeans.

Gee, I don't understand

[BCW2]

I always thought PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals.

but please

[DrLZRDMN]

no AYB jokes

Recovery mission now urgent.

[xv4n]

I think is the moment to forget about searching for life and water on mars, now we need a mission to recover all the missing gear and equipment from failed missions! We'll look pretty dumb when the aliens find out all about that. :)

Other reasons?

[Mr Pippin]

I seem to have a picture in my mind of two Martians fighting over the probe, one eventually winning, and immediately coveting his reward with repetitious mutterings of

"My Precious!"

No signal....

[Cnik70]

Where's that Verizon "Can You Hear me Now" guy when we need him :)

Linux on board

[Cat_Byte]

Amazing how it's running on Linux and command center is running on Linux and nobody comments on that. If it was Microsoft there would be pages of replies blaming them.

Re:Linux on board

[eurostar]

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38174_p.htm

Wait for Mars Express contact

[Oniros]

Mars Express has not yet tempted to contact the Beagle 2. Seems it's the only one that has been specially designed and tested to transmit and receive signals from Beagle 2.

More in the ESA news item.

The Martians will shoot them all down

[Systems Curmudgeon]

Obviously, we send systems to Mars, and the Martians then do a good job of protecting their privacy. There's only one thing to do: Send in the naval fleet!

Using infrared

[js3]

why can't they use an infrared landing system instead? this could take out all the guess work involving the usage of thrusters

3 for 1 is still a bad deal...

[Jerry]

Three $100M failures is more expensive that one $300M success. It's time we either stop sending a bunch of cheap spacecraft all together, or we send one good one that will work.

Celestia?

[__aafutm5472]

Is it me, or in this webcam view here of the ESA command center, are they running Celestia on the large monitor just right of center? Because, it looks just like it does on my Mac...

The Romans and the war god

[jhines]

"There is something on Mars which hates space probes!"

The Romans didn't have to spend much to figure that one out, a long time ago. You can't expect to land on the war god's planet easily did you?

Re:I thoroughly hope this succeeds

[ChickenAintDone]

Remember, what is .25 USD to us is going to cost 100 USD for the government.

Respect to Jodrell Bank

[AlecC]

Sorry about Beagle 2, of course. Well done, lads; it was worth a try, better luck next time.

But give respect to the Jodrell Bank telescope. Nearly half a century old (1957) and still doing leading edge scientific work. What other instrument can boast that? Built for nearly nothing (the main bearings were salvaged out of scrapped battleships) by Prof Bernard Lovell, it has been one of the leading astronomical instruments for its whole life.

Respect.

Viking Lander and others

[Vexar]

I got it in my head that I needed a "full" picture of the different Mars landers. Apparently, they don't make them like they used to.

• Viking Lander A was near 600 kg, 20W antenna, direct to earth communications, 1281 days of operation.
• Beagle 2 was under 30 kg, under 5W antenna, direct to earth capable
• Mars Opportunity is 185kg, UHF antenna to Mars orbiter module, 90 days operation(planned)
• Mars Spirit is about the same as Opportunity

They DO NOT make them like they used to, that is genuinely sad.

This should be modded funny

[Snaller]

But Roofus's sig is correct: http://slashdot.org/~Roofus