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Holding On To Hope For Beagle 2
slasher999 writes "Scientists are still keeping their hopes up that they will be able to revive Beagle via the Mars Express mothership on 4 January. On that date the ship will be in the correct orbit and may then be able to revive the lander. Current theroies as to what may have gone wrong include the possibility that the landers on-board clock is incorrect and that the lander has been transmitting at incorrect times. Funny, I thought I heard that as of yesterday the batteries on the lander would have been depleted unless the lander had received an order to recharge its batteries."
Currency Converter would show that at 8.05153 euros, plus the cost of latte...hehe
That's a straw that even the mission scientists haven't yet grapsed at, and they already seeming to be reaching toward the box of straws marked "Too thin to be viewed even with an electron microscope."
Beagle 2 is toast.
Beagle 2 is either vaporized, or strewn across many kilometers of the Martian surface.
Beagle 2 is so dead it makes even BSD look radiantly healthy.
This is ridiculous, and I for one cannot believe that Prof. Pillinger keeps saying it.
Unlike the NASA orbiter, which might conceivably not be able to understand the Beagle's transmission, Jodrell Bank is looking for its radio carrier (i.e., just for the existence of a transmission at all). It should be able to see it. That's what radio telescopes do, after all - and Jodrell Bank has been looking at space probes since the 1960's.
Moreover, all of Mars is well within a Jodrell Bank beamwidth at 500 MHz, so it doesn't matter where the thing is on Mars - Jodrell Bank should see it. And it's too much to believe that operators at Jodrell Bank, Westerbork and Stanford all screwed up such a simple measurement.
This spacecraft is almost certainly lost; I would rate it's chance of recovery at much less than one per cent.
First, the facts from the Planetary Society:o ns.html
o rm.html
http://www.planetary.org/learn/missions/marsmissi
I saw this one in a comment the other day to a related article... Not sure I believe it myself but some of the pictures and points raised are interesting nonetheless...
http://yorkshireufoinfo.homestead.com/PhobosPlatf
So why don't we send a staffed mission to Mars? Something with a human being on board might stand a fighting chance of actually getting there -- if some unusual situation is encountered, it can be dealt with right there and then. It's not as though human beings are in short supply or require any special tools to manufacture. Even if the trip is strictly one-way, it wouldn't be the first time anyone didn't make it home {how many casualties in Iraq?} Beside which, the honour of "first Earthling buried on Mars" would be a great one, even despite its inherent posthumousness.
I say, get thinking the unthinkable. Stop the cowardice and send a staffed mission now. A few human lives would be a small price to pay for the dividend it would bring.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
And here we have an unmaned probe receiving eulogies (albeit preemtively) that should have remained exclusively as honour reserved for those who truly gave their lives moving exploration forward - from the likes of Magellan, Scott, Cook to the more recent tragedies of the Challenger and Columbia 7s, and countless others, many who will remain unnamed despite their ultimate sacrifice.
Perhaps there was not a equivalent of reality tv even at the then zenith of the British, Spanish and Portuguese Empires to let their people to worry about the welfare of brave, living explorers when they did not call back on time (not that they have the means to); but if we are moved to grief over the failures of a cheap, and an afterthought of a lander at that - then perhaps we have let TV dumb us down too much.
Maybe we lost what was a bold gamble to begin with in this case, but please keep your emotions in perspective. Dissapointment is natural, anything more is overreaction, and for goodness sake don't even think of going into hysteria.
We may mourn people who die, but when an engineering project failed with no fatalities, review, learn and move on. I am sure a lot of people who worked on this project would agree that despite whatever may the fate of Beagle2 be, they have already learn a lot building an actual lander itself.
I listened to the daily brefing yesterday, and the comms expert did say that during a brainstorming session, someone came up with the idea that the Stanford dish could "possibly" detect the EM radiation emmissions of the onboard CPU, but that it was just a working theory and that before they throw in the towel, they'd try it. But, by no means was this anything to hang their hopes on.
They thinking is, the Stanford radiotelescope is so sensative, that detecting small changes in EMR millions of light years away compared to a few million miles...that maybe they could detect it even with the shielding. They also stated it would not be in "real time" and that they would have to scrub the data to see if they can detect a signal 'a la Seti@Home
WTF? Over?
I see my own all the time! You see, I have a TV in the next room still on rabbit ears. When I turn my computer on, channels 2, 4, and 5 become virtually unwatchable because of the processor clock harmonics being emitted in the TV channel spectrum.
Believe me, you might be surprised how much muss and fuss manufacturers go through to make sure they don't emit more EMI than some legal limit, much like auto manufacturers go through the hoops trying to minimize emissions.
The trick they are apt to use on Mars is to use several antennas at the same time to lock into the unit on Mars. Sure, there is a lot of ambient noises, and thats why the multiple antennas - you know exactly what phase delays as the signal arrives at each antenna to expect ( beamformer ). You only pay attention to the signals which arrive at the proper delays to each antenna. Being you know what the processor loop on Mars is doing, you can correlate against that same pattern . When you get correlation to that pattern showing up at the correct time displacements to each antenna, bingo. The unit on Mars is the only one that could emit the signal such that the constraints on the digital filters at the receivers here on Earth are met.
I am not on the team to do this, I am speculating on how I would attempt to do so. I do know computers are terribly noisy in the RF area, and because they emit a peculiar recognizable racket in the RF spectrum in an area that is by nature pretty quiet, it should be "relatively" easy to find. Especially one hung in a tight loop.
If you browse around for "pseudorandom noise generators", also known as "linear feedback shift registers", you will see a lot of tie-ins to "spread spectrum" communications, with technologies for digging signals out of the noise by taking advantage of correlation to known patterns.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
IANARS (rocket scientist) but speaking from pure computer scientist's perspective (or any kind of scientist's perspective, as a matter of fact), it is essential to have as much feedback as possible exactly at critical times like that when things break. It may not prevent the failure of the system the first time, but will give us the necessary info to tell what went wrong and design around it the next time.
So, wouldn't it be wise to design a descent phase with no communication blackout?
The only reason I can fathom why this is not done yet, is that it is really hard and/or expensive. Transmitting info to Earth may be difficult, because it must drain too much power and (in my understanding) the initial phase of the descent actually happens on the back side of Mars (as viewed from Earth).
However, now that we have an orbitting satellite around Mars, would it be so hard to time the probe's landing so that its transmissions of its status are picked up by the Mars Odissey which can then safely retransmit them back to Earth at its leisure? Does any one know if this is feasible at all?
design a half-assed re-entry method that is unproven
The Mars Pathfinder mission proved that a drag parachute plus impact absorbing air bag are effective mechanisms for touching down safely on mars.
without any type of backup.
What space vehicle to planetary atmospheric insertion system has ever been designed with a backup? When things go wrong during insertion, the result has always been loss of the vehicle. Even for vehicles whose precious cargo is living, breathing, humans.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
you seem to be a little upset. what can i say...you baited, i accepted. the line snapped and i ran away with your lure. if thats your best response, that "a couple of retro rockets" "had nothing to do with heat breaking" well...obviously it made some kind of difference. you really shouldnt feel too bad, the batting average for landing on mars isnt too good. dont take it out on me. go back and read the pathfinder and viking protocols, compare that with those of beagle2 and then YOU tell ME which scenario you think would realistically have a CHANCE of landing on mars. i understand that your budget may not have allowed for the massive "overengineering" that the aforementioned missions allowed, but hey im just telling it like it is.