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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
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
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!
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.