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Mars Crater Theory Tries To Explain Missing Beagle

Posted by simoniker on from the put-face-on-mars'-eye-out dept.

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."

6 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This crater... by aheath · · Score: 4, Informative

    The BBC News web site has a story with a picture of the crater.

  2. Re:Interesting... by BlewScreen · · Score: 5, Informative
    Interesting indeed...

    From this article:

    [The crater] was only revealed by close-up pictures of the site taken by another NASA orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, minutes after the British probe was supposed to have landed last Thursday.

    "minutes after" ????

    here's a mapthat shows a couple (from really far away).

    Isidis Planitia is at the equator, 1/4 in from the right - there's a big crater under the "a", but you can see others...

    and here's a close-up

    The gray circular area on the right, in the middle, is the area in question - the crater you can see under the letter "a" in the previous map is the one that's just barely cut off on the right in this one... I think the one they think the probe is in is the one slightly north and about an inch to the west of that one.

    I'm not sure when these were taken, but I was looking at them back in the spring, so they've been up for a while, i.e., not since only "minutes after" the probe disappeared...

    AND, as you can see, it's very easy to tell that there are craters there - and I'm not even a scientist, nor do I have access to ALL the pix of mars...

    -bs

    --
    That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
  3. Photos of landing site by flug · · Score: 4, Informative

    This page has several photos of the landing site, showing the weather the day of the landing (it was fine) and also the famous "crater" within the landing zone: Beagle2 landing site photos

  4. Re:Is it pre-programmed to do anything? by Lispy · · Score: 3, Informative

    You seem as you are really unaware so let me explain:
    1. No, it won't start the experiments on it's own afaik. But it will fall into an emergency mode where it sends continously in case it's clock is broken. This might be Mars Express (the ESA-Orbiter) chance to pick up the signal and reset Beagle2.

    2. Beagle was a cheapo mission therefore making it move would have cost a lot of money (even if it only was for the extraweight). It was already cheap and even if it cost millions it was very inexpensive compared to the Pathfinder or the incoming M2K4-Landers from Nasa.

    3. Moving around Mars is hard, even harder when you are an autonomous robot. The biggest "moves" we made up there was the Marsrover wich was basically a small remote controlled car that went as far as 10 meters away from it's landing site (that's my assumption, not sure on the exact distance).

    cu,
    Lispy

  5. Re:Interesting... by Wavicle · · Score: 3, Informative

    One not so obvious fact is that the "target area" is approximately oval in shape. The landing area is pi*a*b where a and b are the major and minor radii of the oval. Thus the total area is approximately 3.141 * 35 * 22.5 = 2474 km^2.

    The 1km dia crater has an area of 3.141 * .5^2 = .785 km^2

    So .785 km^2 / 2474 km^2 = .000317 or .03%

    So yeah, 2% doesn't look quite right on its face...

    However, the target area is a probability distribution. The vehicle is not equally likely to touch down at all points within it. It's probably a 3-sigma target area distribution meaning you are something like 99.7% sure that the vehicle will impact within the target area, but points within 1-sigma of the target center are far more likely to be the touchdown points.

    So, without knowing where the crater is in relation to the center of the touchdown spot, it is somewhat hard to say what proportion of the probability landing distribution it occupies. 2% could be an accurate probability if it is sufficiently close to the center of the target area.

    --
    Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
    Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
  6. Re:useless by Rimbo · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to Paul Ehlrich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb" we would of been eating each other by now for lack of food.


    What happened was twofold.

    1. Food production technology continued to improve.
    2. Several billion people were never born.

    And what's really happening is that we're getting better at distributing and producing food faster than we are at making babies. What's more, countries like China and India that have imposed reproduction limitations are, combined with a desire to have male children, going to see their populations plummet if the measures remain effective.

    Which is why I think the more effective argument isn't the population growth as much as the "all eggs in one basket" issue. Sure, the probability of getting hit by a large enough asteroid is small, but it only takes one...