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Mars Crater Theory Tries To Explain Missing Beagle
JayBonci writes "CNN is running a piece regarding the failure of the Beagle Mars probe being possibly attributed to a crater landing. It's an interesting story about the variety of forensics being used to try and pick up on the lost craft."
[homer] D'oh [/homer]
It was aliens. We know they don't want us poking around their planet and are shooting down our probes. Time to take a hint. I think the Venusians are less hostile anyway.
No no, see he did it.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
I mean, if it landed hard enough to make a crater, I'm sure it probably stopped working entirely! ;)
You are not the customer.
Would that make it the longest hole-in-one in History?
R.It says it was a "recently discovered crater". I trust it wasn't caused by the impact from Beagle2 crash-landing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3354271.stm
Comic Theory:
Marvin the Martian just got a new barbecue grill for Christmas.
Conspiracy Theory:
World governments chipped in to send the barbecue grill to Marvin so as to appease the martian and prevent a loud Earth-shattering Kaboom!
Solution:
Get Duck Dodgers to get our grill back.
Why not consider all possibilities?
;)
In all likelihood, the Beagle 2's landing made the crater.
Heh.
I'm betting on a 1 km wide crater, containing a much smaller beagle-sized crater.
Either that or there's a Martian museum somewhere on the planet with all our spacecraft in it.
This is an exciting time for Mars exporation with two rovers and a Beagle arriving over the period of a month or so.
Unfortunately the Beagle 2 seems to have followed the Simplified Planetary Local Approach Trajectory that has been so popular with recent Mars landers.
This is quite depressing, but Beagle 2 was a bit of a shoestring mission from the beginning. There's a reasonable chance that one of the NASA rovers will survive, though this is by no means a sure thing.
Even ignoring the technical challenge of having everything work perfectly, the landscape of Mars is quite capable of swallowing up one of these landers without a trace. A poorly placed pile of rocks or a deep gully and you're history.
I think that eventually we will have to send people to Mars, not because of the scientific reasons but just to satisfy our curiosity about what actually happened to all these lost landers.
G.
who would benefit from those soil samples and so on?
For soil samples, I suggest collecting them on the flight director's chair, as soon as he stops staring widly at the screen and goes take a break.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So what they're telling us is essentially:
Beagle2 is sent into orbit by EU.
Beagle2 rides EU's rocket.
Beagle2 cratered.
Beagle2 disconnected.
EU: anyone there?
Jeez, somebody loses their dog and they blame a crater on Mars.
No, it will land on a crater. *tadabump*.
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!
the crater was there before landing: http://www.beagle2.com/resources/down-crater3.htm
"Stop tossing your junk onto my planet! Oh it makes me so very angry!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
IIRC if the airbags didn't deploy, it would have hit the ground at ~60 MPH.
If the chute didn't... ??? 600mph?
Cratered.
I think that was the first assumption...
The martians aren't stupid. They know what the europeans did to the american indians. They are not about to let ANYTHING with a flag, or possibility of a flag, land on their planet.
Europeans have this anoying habit of showing up, sticking a flag in something, and proclaiming that they have discovered it. This of course iritates the people already there as they felt that maybe they discovered it first. Where upon the europeans point out that they do not have a flag and that they are disqualified on that technicality. Then they shot them. Martians are just doing what the indians should have done to columbuss. Thats not a crater, thats a barbecue pit and the martians are about to have beagle fricassee.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Sounds like what happened to the Russian Venus lander:
... once the spacecraft had landed, the lens cap was thrown off ... Each spacecraft also had an experiment called the "Dynamic Penetrometer". The Penetrometer was a spring-loaded arm with a point on the end of it. The point would penetrate deep into soft ground ... but the photographs from Venera 14 show that the point of the penetrometer landed exactly on the lens cap. This is proof that Murphy's Law is a universal law.
The Soviets used the diamond as a front glass to protect the lens