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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.
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.
Assuming a circular crater, the cross-section of hitting this crater would be 2%.
Bad, bad luck.
The owls are not what they seem
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
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
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.
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
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
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 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
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'.
I just want to chime in here a bit.
People have been saying NASA missions are much more costly than Beagle 2, and therefore NASA is wasteful (this was implied by BBC and later removed from articles after they couldn't contact the craft).
Pathfinder was a Discovery class mission, and had a budget of $250 million. This is about 4x Beagle's budget of $60 million.
If anybody wants to say NASA is wasteful by looking at those numbers, they must realize the following
- Beagle 2 made use of the parachute/airbag landing system that was tested and demonstrated by the Pathfinder team
- Pathfinder had an autonomous (ie, not controlled realtime by a human) rover while Beagle 2 has a robotic arm.
- Pathfinder (IIRC) had a high-gain antenna which could communicate w/ Earth while Beagle 2 only has low-gain antenna to communicate with Mars orbiting craft with small hopes of Earth receiver arrays of detecting the craft.
Beagle 2 may have been cheaper but that doesn't mean it was necessarily more efficiently planned. Pathfinder had more complicated tasks to conduct, and also had more rigorous testing, and thus cost more.It's just annoying to see BBC showing nationalistic bias and taking jabs at NASA when we should all really be working together in the exploration process. Especially in areas of science where nationalistic bias shouldn't exist at all.
Just my two cents.
make world, not war
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.
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...