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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]
Kiss it goodbye, wait for the next one.
Manhours are better spent in the future, rather than the past.
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.
Did you read the article? The target area is 70km long by 45km wide. I don't think there's any area on Mars that big that doesn't have at least one large crater.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
No no, see he did it.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
I don't think that's the way to bet somehow.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
It takes that much time to lose one of those Mars probes, I mean from earth to mars it still does take more than overnight trip to get to, that people will have time to build new ones before they even know they lost the latest probe...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
From the article:
While they cannot make out the ship itself, the image shows a 1 km (0.62 mile) wide crater at the center of the 70 by 10 km (43.5 by 6 mile) target area near the Martian equator, Pillinger said. It is possible, although unlikely, that the Beagle may be unable to communicate because it landed in the crater, he said.
"This would be an incredibly unlucky situation," he said.
So, according to the theory, the probe didn't make a crater, it landed in one. Just to make things clear.
Assuming a circular crater, the cross-section of hitting this crater would be 2%.
Bad, bad luck.
The owls are not what they seem
IANAE(ngineer), but if the Beagle cannot send or receive any data, is it programmed it to keep working, e.g. collect soil samples, even if it is cut off from communication, or will it simply sit dead if cannot send or receive signals?
And if this cost millions(?) of dollars to create, just to get stuck in a hole, how hard would it have been to program it to move around, and try to get somewhere where its communications would work?
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
Yes, because bacteria and other life forms that develop in extreme conditions can offer interesting information on how life develops. (As well as more practical uses in medicine, as they probably have some unique and hopefully applicable properties.)
The Beagle 2 spacecraft was a European effort. NASA didn't build it.
On the other hand, NASA has two spacecraft on the way to Mars right now. The first one will land on January 3rd.
Cross your fingers.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
A large number of the spacecrafts we put up stay up in space, therefore skipping the need to land, and most things that do land tend to land on Earth which we know a little more about.
Seems like we've got a 50% failure rate for landing on Mars.
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.
or more likely, something went wrong during whatever sequence of actions the probe was supposed to follow, and the only theory involved is Murphy's law.
...
It sounds to me like these guys are trying to shift the blame away from the probe, and therefore from them. But really, why should they not admit it's a cockup? there's nothing wrong in admitting a Mars probe failed, it's already quite an achievement to send man-made things there, and it's understood that there are risks involved, and that there's a very real probability that the mission will fail. There's no shame in that.
These guys tried their best and it didn't work. It's not like they tried to hide their failure of clipping their toenails or something
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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?
Now, my knowledge of astronomy and all related things extends about as far as "Look. The moon!", but if you can get shots of the crater like this, then how can the probe be "buried" in the crater so far as to not be able to communicate? We're lookin' right into it, there.
Was that photo from Earth? Was that photo from another probe? Do we never see that view from Earth?
Seems like the damn thing just broke. Admit it.
You know what?
Isn't the fact that they selected the landing site BEFORE noticing a 1km large crater an indication that they've got the cart before the horse? Perhaps they should try thouroughly mapping the planet from low orbit before landing on it!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Jeez, somebody loses their dog and they blame a crater on Mars.
No, it will land on a crater. *tadabump*.
I have wondered for a while on the logic and wisdom behind the Beagle mission. I found the idea of sending a 60kg lander without any guidance boosters or rockets, no matter how small, an incredibly bad idea. The probe seperated 3 million kilometers away from the planet and then carried on to mars and atmostpheric entry without any possibility of attitude or course correction. Just think about it, 3 million kilometers and even the smallest of deviations of attitude could have meant the probe arriving in the atmosphere on its side or even upside down.
I somehow think that it probably arrived with an incorrect entry attitude and then burnt up on entry.
Perhaps the next time around they'll add a few kilograms to the package for small attitude coreectional motors.
*cough*basicsofmaterialscience*cough*usebestmateri alsforjob*cough*
Although you're spot on about the airbags. Hell, the original pair blew up during pressure testing too!
But don't overestimate our geographical knowledge of Mars, or underestimate Mars' irregularity. Landing something in an unfamiliar, hostile atmosphere without complete knowlede of the landing zone is difficult. Just have a look at where the Mars Rover was meant to go and where it actually landed for a good idea of the uncertainties involved.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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
The Mars Global surveyor passed over the landing site 20mins after the Beagle2 landed, the picture of the landing site is here here
Troll,
My main accomplishment in life is not "making swirly patterns in gimp". However, it should be noted that none of my "swirly patterns" ever went tits-up due to bad engineering. Infact, they worked so well that trolls like you remember them, and apparently still use them.
I just find it awful that rather than be true scientists, these schmucks are trying to spin the living hell out of this situation to save face. The right thing to say would be that the Beagle 2 died from bad engineering, not bad luck. It's engineering shortcomings have been known and debated publically for months.
What you need to understand is that Newtonian physics will get ANY probe 99.999% of the way there. Thats leaves 0.001% of the work up to engineering. If they can't get the remaining 0.001% down, they should go back to designing things like shoes and lollipops. 1950's technology put us on the Moon. 1960's technology put us on Venus and Mars. These people want you to believe that 90's technology put us in a crater.
Bowie J. Poag
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!
Yes, we British did make a twin engined fighter (named the Mosquito) out of wood. The Germans hated the Mosquito, it flew too high and too fast for them to shoot it down. Also, when they did managed to hit one, it generally survived to get back to base.
Back on topic:
The budget for the Beagle was very small, and to be honest I think it was way too small to give the probe a decent chance. However, I know of another country with huge budgets for space who often fail too.
My personal opinion is that the airbags failed. Having airtight material closely folded and kept that way for months in a vacuum at very low temperatures, seems asking for trouble.
I sometimes despair at my Government, when it comes to space exploration. I find it amazing that they will fund anything for space, so I shouldn't be so surprised at such a small budget.
It will be interesting to see when the Chinese begin to send probes to Mars, and how successful, or otherwise, they will be.
-Nivag
the crater was there before landing: http://www.beagle2.com/resources/down-crater3.htm
Sadly the Beagle team didn't have access to bottomless pits of money and didn't have any choice about the launch date.
They had a hard enough time raising the money ( themselves ) as it was. I am sure they tested the probe as thoroughly as they possibly could before it was launched.
That being the case it was a case of either give it a go with what they had or not give it a go at all.
Maybe with a high profile person such as yourself ( anonymous coward ) in charge this the whole thing would have been a roaring success, I guess we'll never know will we ?
"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
I think they can manage around 1.5 - 2 Metres per pixel, I'm not sure how big the Beagle is but I don't think it's much more than a metre diameter so it may not be big enough to show up at all.
Viking I and II lasted from 6/76 and 8/76 to 11/82 and 4/80, respectively. Depends on how long the solar cells can grab a charge and aren't covered by dust and maybe on the batteries.
Bush Lies On the Record.
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
According to the TV news the other day here (UK), Beagle 2 was the first craft to actually use a parachute on a Mars descent (the idea was to slow it down for an impact on the surface at 40mph or so).
I think most, if not all previous Mars landers have used parachutes as part of the landing process, but they had some form of retro-rockets as well - Beagle 2 had none.
Mars does has an atmosphere, and though it's thick enough for parachutes to be used to dump most of the kinetic energy remaining after the heat-shield's been jettisoned, it's still too thin for a nice, gentle touchdown without a huge parachute.
Beagle 2 must have been small and light enough to warrant the use of no rockets at all; ~70kg versus ~800kg for one of the upcoming Nasa rovers must make a big difference. Simpler may be better, but sadly it still sounds like something went wrong...
Viking landing
Pathfinder landing
Beagle 2 landing
From these animations, it appears that Mars is now littered with:
1) the heat-shield from its entry.
2) the first parachute and associated hardware.
3) the second, larger parachute and associated hardware.
4) the "cushioning bags".
5) some metal pieces as the machine opens.
I have no idea if Mars' atmosphere is thick enough to thoroughly burn up the myriad other parts that were disengaged during its descent, so that may be a whole raft of other crap in addition to what I have mentioned. Can't we spoil only one planet at a time?
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
It is highly likely that human beings as a species will outgrow the Earth's resources. At that point we can either enact draconian measures to limit reproduction, or more realistically, we can begin to reach out to other worlds. One added benefit of reaching out to other worlds is that it prevents the old "all your eggs in one basket" problem: If an asteroid takes out Earth or something, humanity gets wiped out. I'd like to keep the species going... I like humans.
With fava beans and a nice chianti.
Anyway, knowing more about the universe outside of this globe makes us better able to move beyond. For my money, the sooner, the better.
Ultimately space exploration is for the same cause as environmentalism to me: It's about our continued survival and growth as a species.
The only way that Beagle 2 can achieve its mass goals is by having no redundancy in its electronics whilst relying on a robust and failure-tolerant design.
(From http://www.beagle2.com/technology/command.htm)
That's not good. Anything electronic failed, forget it...
If we ever colonize this planet, we will have to clean our crap up from all over the place.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
That would have made no difference. The critical issue with atmospheric entry is WHERE in the atmosphere it enters, this was controlled very very accurately by pointing Beagle2 before it was released by Mars Express. Once thats done Bagle simply follows newtons laws to its entry point. Beagle 2 was "spun up" before it left Mars express to stabilize its attitude so it would enter the atmosphere with the correct side down but even if this failed it wouldn't really matter all that much. Attude of Beagle on initial entry dosen't matter because as soon as it starts to hit the top of the atmosphere it will right itself so the heat shield is pointed down; the same way that a pencil dropped from a tall building will always land point down.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
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.
.5^2 = .785 km^2
.785 km^2 / 2474 km^2 = .000317 or .03%
The 1km dia crater has an area of 3.141 *
So
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)
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...
Well, could Beagle2 have been fried in the same solar flare event which finally did in the Japanese probe?
Was it possible to test Beagle2 for this while it was still attached to the ESA's Mars Express?
I have not seen any remarks about this in the mainstream media.
Am I just being dense?
If two-thirds of 34 missions ended in failure, wouldn't that mean there were 11 successful missions? How come Beagle 2 would only be the fourth successful one?
It must be that the first statistic is talking about all kinds of missions (including simple orbiters with no landing component) whilst the second is talking only about landers.
That being the case, only three out of the eleven successful missions included landers in the first place. I don't believe that as many as nine or ten landers have ever been sent to Mars. This suggests that the failure rate of the landers is not noticably different than the failure rate of relatively simple orbiters.
What that says to me that the problem is not so much the rigours of descent as of the difficulty of getting electronics and batteries to last throughout launch and the long trip to Mars. I'm betting that these failed landers were dead before they even hit the atmosphere.
www.sjbaker.org