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Still No Contact from Beagle 2
Many of you have submitted this, so this will be a condensing of the relevant information. WebfishUK writes: "The BBC has just released this story which announces the failure of the latest and possibly best chance to contact the British built Mars probe, Beagle 2. Given that Mars Express was designed to communicate with Beagle (unlike the earlier attempts with NASA's Mars Odyssey), this may indicate that something catastrophic has happened to Beagle 2." From Bromrrrrr: "[The]
ESA is reporting that the Mars Express, which everybody was hoping would be able to get through to the poor lost puppy, has failed its first attempt. 'We have not lost hope yet to contact Beagle 2, but we also know that it has landed on an unforgiving planet,' said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science." and I-R-Baboon adds: "The Mars Express mothership from the EU passed 350 km over the intended landing site of the Beagle 2 hearing only silence. Although nothing was heard, hope has not been given up yet, as scientists will keep trying until February, with more passovers of the Beagle 2's landing site on January 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, and 14th." Additional updates can be obtained from the Beagle 2 homepage as well as from the ESA's homepage for the Mars Express. Here's hoping that the lander is only down, and not out.
unlike the earlier attempts with NASA's Opportunity
That would be the Mars Odyssey, not Opportunity.
Dude, we're all humans, and we're all in this together. Your probe worked (wooyay), ours didn't. (doh)
There is such a thing as a bad winner you know.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
They're in completely different places, and each MER can move at 0.02 MPH, top ;)
So, not a chance :(
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
IIRC, from the pictures I saw, they are like 1/4 of the way around the planet from the beagle. Check the nasa mars site, they show the landing locations
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
1000 years at top speed, according to a site I read.
Guess not, eh?
The robots of Spirit and Opportunity (The 2nd Mars expedition of NASA on the way to Mars) are only capable of moving 40m a Mars-day (24.6 hours earth time)
.. ...
;)
according to NASA they shall be kept operational for at least 90 days
thus minus the first 10 days without planned movement gives them a radius of about
3,2 km
no chance buddy
Beyond Beagle
Meanwhile, UK science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who was at a Beagle news conference in North London on Monday, gave the strongest indication yet that the British Government would help fund the European Space Agency's (Esa) Aurora programme.
"We need to be working with Esa to ensure that, in some form, there is a Beagle 3 that takes forward this technology. I very much hope that the Aurora programme which is currently being developed by Esa will take forward this kind of exploration."
The Aurora programme is Esa's bold vision to land probes, and perhaps eventually, astronauts on the Red Planet.
From here.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
NASA's Spirit actually sent telemetry tones back to the Odyssey orbiter as it started decending through the martian atmosphere. They meant things like:
:-)
- "I have entered atmosphere and everything seems to be in order"
- "I have started to bounce on the martian surface"
- "I have stopped bouncing on the surface and is still alive"
etc...
It might still not be able to easily pinpoint where it crashed if it had done so, but it would at least work like a primitive "black box" doing the best it can to tell what went wrong. Since this is obviously also good to know to learn from mistakes.
Read more here.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Not a chance. I followed the rover web pages long before the launch and they spent years deciding where to land them and the final locations were decided six months before the launch. It was a tricky balance between on the one hand finding spots of maximum research value and on the other hand being reasonably safe to land on. So they won't change it just like that. In addition to that - the speed with which the rovers move is so slow that even if they sent it to land at the same spot where Beagle 2 was supposed to the precision would be so bad that they could spend their entire 90 day mission searching the area without ever finding the probe. And even though it might be interesting to find out what happended to Beagle 2 there isn't much scientific value in trying to investigate what happened to an object sent from earth compared to surveying the planet itself. And the only investigation the rover could do is to take pictures since it's equipped to drill holes in rocks and analyse them. Not pick up pieces of a probe.
Karma. Moderation. Is my
I thought Beagle 2 was funded by the ESA once, but actually they only funded a minor part of it. Major funding came from the UK alone and private funders. Mars Express was basically funded solely by the ESA and it was a success, so there's where your euros went. :-) They just took the opportunity to piggy-back the Beagle with the Mars Express, and this unique method was also shown to work flawlessly.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Just in case you (or someone else) don't know: the solar panels degrade over time because of dust build up. So at some point it will just run out of juice...
karma capped
Hey, there are plenty of Americans here who wish the Beagle 2 was happily yipping at the Mars Express about all the cool red stuff it found (I'm one of them). The problem, as you'll notice, is that whenever there can be considered any rivalry between the US and Europe, both sides go at it and will completely derail the topic. It gets very, very tiering and is easy to fall into.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
check ESA Mars Express Orbiter Details to see how much more scientific data the european mission will return, even though some 20% of the mission failed.
- 3D imaging will reveal the topography of Mars in full colour
- build up a map of surface composition in 100 m squares, also measure aspects of atmospheric composition
- build up measurements of ozone and water vapour over the total surface of the planet for the different seasons
- measure the vertical pressure and temperature profile of carbon dioxide which makes up 95% of the martian atmosphere, and look for minor constituents including water, carbon monoxide, methane and formaldehyde
- measure ions, electrons and energetic neutral atoms in the outer atmosphere to reveal the numbers of oxygen and hydrogen atoms
- probe the planet's ionosphere, atmosphere, surface and even the interior
- map the sub-surface structure to a depth of a few kilometres
a lander just creeps around, poking holes in things. orbiter looks closely at the whole planet.
why not let the science results decide who succeeded.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Beagle2 was only 'the lander' of Mars Express.
On the website we can read:
The Mars Express Orbiter will:
image the entire surface at high resolution (10 m/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 m/pixel)
produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 m resolution
map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation
determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometres
determine the effect of the atmosphere on the surface
determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind
All of that sounds really cool.
Iraq: war to save the U
"Beagle was built at a cost of around 45m, whereas NASA spent 512m." Total cost for TWO rovers and launch costs were around $850 M, so the figure above is impossible. In addition, the Beagle figure omits launch costs. The equivalent cost for one US rover would be around $375 M (assuming $100 M in launch costs).
website : CERN (Switzerland)
broadband : ??? ADSL - Alcatel (France)
telephone : Bell (Canada)
Big Mac : who gives a shit (USA)
Just love those crappy posts who seem to score on Slashdot... you just have to wonder what they are smoking !
The panels did fold up, but they were held by pyrotechnic fasteners. When the rover unfolds, the pyros blow and the panels drop by gravity. There's no way to fold them up again.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
There is indeed a way to track the orientation of the spacecraft. The lander is ejected by the SUEM (spin-up eject mechanism) which, as you might guess, spins the lander. Spin stabilization is tried and true.
If the spacecraft were tumbling, the strength of the signal would have varied in a regular way, and they would have detected that.
Also, they were able to contact the lander while in free flight. The Earthside antennas that they used to try to get the signal on the 25th would also have been used to communicate with the spacecraft in free flight.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
... was the "It isn't enough that I succeed: Someone else must fail" kind of mentality that underscored the IRC messages from JPL.
If someone goes around shouting "We No.1, We No 1!", and they really are number one, fine. They're a bit OTT and demonstrative, but still, fine.
It's when someone, anyone, goes around shouting "We No. 1 - you shit!", that patience wears a bit thin.
Best,
T&K.
Political language
There is a difference between transmitting a 20k photo of mars and a carrier wave which indicates that you're alive. Spirit basically transmitted a couple of simple modulated signals which indicated various states of the craft. Granted, during re-entry not much would get through, and it was hit and miss during much of the rest of the landing as well, but they did get some signals, which in the event of a failure would have helped them to isolate what went wrong and might have helped in designing the next probe (sure, they tested the design, but there is no better test for landing on mars than LANDING ON MARS).
Very simple AM/FM tones don't require a directional antenna. Plus, you have the advantage of having other probes in orbit around Mars which presumably could have been listening for the signals.
I don't think Spirit is the first craft to use this technique either. I don't remember where, but I think I saw a writeup on a previous space probe which could transmit simple signals simply to indicate that they were alive in in one of a few states when they were in a situation that precluded a directional link.
It's not a matter of the cleanliness of the panels, but of the damage the dust causes them. IF it was merely about the presence of the dust, then the first gust of wind would fix the problem. The problem is that the dust scratches the panels when it blows across them.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The difference and analytical engines wew design by a Brit in the UK. The Z3 was German and the bombes and in particular, Colossus for code cracking were British, albeit the bombes had some Polish input. The first commercial electronic computer was built by a British company as was the first virtual memory computer. Essentially it wasn't until the superior buying power of major corporations and the US government spurred development over in the US. The European market was very fragmented then and without a large single domestic market, they fell behind.
Well this is the same org that wasted 300+ million dollars because the couldn't do metric/english conversion correctly...