Slashdot Mirror
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.
why dont they include some sort of near-indestructible beacon that will send a signal in case of crash, so that orbiting probes can locate and photograph the crash site??
But it's down... and won't get up again. Let's just rejoice over the spirit pictures.... It is something, even if it wans't funded by our tax euros.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
How far away is the US probe from the beagle landing site? Could they send their own little explorer over to check out what happened?
At the rate that the US probe can travel - it would take *YEARS* to get the the Beagle 2's remains. (this is assuming that Mars is flat - it isen't, it has huge valleys and mountains.)
Even then, it would be of no use - if the Beagle can't open itself, Sprit's arm woulden't have enought torque to help out. And beagle would be probably covered in dust.
Plus! We don't even know where Beagle 2 is!!! It hasen't contacted us.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Huge ambition packed into such a small volume (73kg) and the only test-landing failed miserably.
:-( We are all in this together, remember ? Anyone still there ?
Well, you never learn until you've tried and failed. Perhaps next time.
What I do find disappointing is the first post above though. I'm obviously disappointed for us Brits that our first Mars probe has died a death, but I'm elated the US managed to get theirs to work perfectly. Pity the feelings aren't reciprocal
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Although beagle failed, I would like to commend the ESA for attempting the mission on a shoe-string budget. Landing on Mars is no easy task as we have found through a few, shall we say mishaps. Also, let us not forget that Beagle 2 was only part of the mission. I do believe that Mars Express is operating as expected. So all and all, for a first mission on a tight budget and small timeframe, I think the ESA put on a good show and encourage them in their efforts to explore the universe.
The US succeeded where the EU did not
Yeah. Of course, it's totally unheard for an American space project to blow up, or fail completely because the scientists couldn't even manage to seperate metric measurements from imperial. Let's face it, the Beagle landed in a crater. Tragic, but it's not incompetence.
Feeling the need to declare your nation's superiority on Slashdot is quite the sign of insecurity.
You have the choice between:
(1) landing all the probes at the same location because of a slim chance that they can help each other, or
(2) land them all across the planet so you can learn more.
JanMark from slashdot would like (1), but it looks like the rockets scientists chose (2).
I mean, do you think they intentionally build the signalling system to self-destruct on a crash landing, or what ?
There's a 73 Kg limit (including all the airbags, entry heat-shield, and the actual payload) for the entire mission, and you want to put in armoured (read: heavy) modules for when it all goes wrong ?
What purpose would this serve ? So we can now get a photo where the 6 white pixels (and I'm being *very* generous with the resolving power of the orbital cameras) are the lander. Whoosh. What now ? And to do that, we leave out the gas spectrometer, perhaps ?
I'm sure you're a clever individual, but there are also very clever people at mission control. They will have forgotten more about sending probes on a journey through the Solar System than you or I will ever know, and I really was a rocket scientist, albeit only for a few years (it doesn't pay well...) Engage brain before fingers...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
What's with you people and your Beagle jokes. Why haven't people realized yet (After we've been talking about this for weeks) that the MER landing sites are very far away from Beagle and that nothing would be gained anyway from visiting the "crash" site. I still see /.ers think Beagle was a US venture or don't realize that MER is an international effort (Although NASA paid for most of it.)
./ posters were informed... but I guess I am new here.
I thought
The impression I'm getting is that, while it should be possible to photograph the crash site, there is not sufficient telemetry data to locate the crashed lander. All that's known is that it's probably within a huge area.
We have to keep in mind the scale. The landers are very small objects, compared to the angle and depth of focus of the cameras on the satellites, which are dealing with a *planetary* scale.
If you drop your watch in the grand canyon, do you think you'd ever find it?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What's with the anti-french sentiments? I really don't get it. Don't forget that without the french you wouldn't have won the war of independence and you wouldn't have the statue of liberty.
Yes, but after our war for independance France went into a serious decline. It got much much worse after Napoleon. WWII finished them off. Now they don't even fight their own battles anymore. There is not a lot to be proud of with respect to France these days. It is sad, but true.
I second the motion, how stupid was it to provide no means of "dusting" the solar panels?
Since it folded up its solar panels for flight is it possible to re fold them up and knock some dust off?
Well, there is absolutely nothing to be proud of with respect to the US, or is there?
Sure there is. We have the strongest economy and the largest GNP in the world. We have the greatest technology (though I fear that may change if we do not shape up) in the world. We have the strongest military. We invented the computer you are using to connect to the website (also invented here) over the internet (invented here) using broadband (invented here) or the telephone (also invented here). Slashdot itself was invented here and is hosted here.
Another thing to be proud of with respect to the US is that our citizens clearly do care about what happens in the rest of the world, as evidenced by our work as the global police. True, we get a lot of flak over it, but the US has endeavoured to do some very good things with its technology and powerful military. If teh US was really bent on world domination, it would be a dark dark world indeed. But Americans don't want to dominate the world, they want other people to live free like we do. Nothing illustrates this better than what happened in WWII, where every country occupied by the US ended up being a liberated democracy whereas the USSR enslaved as much of the world as it could as had their friends the Nazis.
What confuses most people, Americans included, is the actions of our government in recent decades. There are clearly people in our government with Imperialist attitudes about things, and right now those people are more powerful than ever before, more popular, and more arrogant. So we have a serious chance of losing what makes us great right now. This is why ordinary Americans need to recall why we are proud to be Americans. Step up to the plate, speak out, and say no to those who seek to dominate other human beings.
What is your definition of smart, then?
Oh, and I'll give kudos to the scientists... they clearly deserve it. But I can't rehire them. I'd like to know what politicians funded this so I can make sure they get hired again (or at least cast my vote). Anybody know?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Of course they did make several unmanned landings. What I hadn't realised was that in 1976 they also had a probe return samples to Earth.
I feel sorry for the ESA. This failed mission coupled with NASA's tremendous success has to gall the ESA and many Europeans. Whether they want to admit it or not, Europeans judge themselves by how they do in comparison to Americans. They failed in this endeavour.
I believe we should have a World Space Agency but that won't happen until Europe and China and India to a lesser degree get a handle on their inferiority complexes and stop trying to prove they can do what the Americans can do and start working together in a cooperative manner.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Erm, if someone on Slashdot (or any normal person) thought of this idea, do you really think they DIDN'T consider it?
I mean for the love of god, as someone already said, how can you call people who sent a semi-autonomous robot through space to land on another planet stupid? (Which might I add, entails strapping a machine with sensitive equipment onto a massive, giant, firework. It then has to survive extremely violent vibrations during launch, which involves igniting thousands and thousands of pounds of propellant. Then it needs to survive radation and other nasties out in space. Then it has to go through an atmosphere (a weaker one than ours, but an atmosphere nonetheless) and survive extreme heat buildup, only to have a parachute be released which produces a short burst of extreme G's (or whatever you'd get from a quick, violent slowdown, and I could be wrong, I just assume it would be pretty violent), and then, on top of all that, it could bounce on inflated airbags for miles until it finally comes to a rest near, if not on the target zone, unfolds, and then sends pictures and other data back to Earth? Yeah, they're stupid allright.)
Perhaps wipers would have scratched dust or the equivelant of sand across the solar panels worse than just the wind. Or maybe the wind is enough to keep them operating until other parts of the machine fail.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
You're calling the people who built, launched and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space and landed it on another planet stupid?
On the surface, they would appear to be equally as smart as the people who built, launched, and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space, but failed to get it into orbit around Mars because of a mid-flight command error that most people would call stupid. I don't believe either team is stupid, but both teams are equally prone to honest mistakes. There are sometimes glaring design optimizations that could have been made, but somehow just were not thought about for whatever reason.
I don't think that's likely the case here, but just because they're rocket scientists, it doesn't magically mean they've become infallible.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Whenever I read obvious BS like this on /. I bookmark the post, wait until I get new mod points and mod it down once I do.
We had your kind of patriotism in Germany too once you know? It's called fascism now.
Well if you are truly German perhaps reports of superior German education are unfounded after all. Allow me to give you a demonstration in political science 101.
What you are referring to in actually Nationalism. A firm belief that your country is the best. Nationalism gets a bad rap in part because of situations like Nazi Germany. But it is really not evil in itself to think your country is the best in the world. The trick is to work to make it so. If you do not have pride in your country, and do not work to make your country better, your civilization will ultimately fall.
Besides, what is wrong with having pride in one's country? Someone said that the US had nothing to be proud of. I refuted them and gave some of the myriad reasons US citizens have to be proud. What is wrong with that?
What would you say if I claimed Germany had nothing to be proud of? Would you not defend your country and speak of its rich cultural traditions, beautiful landscape (and women), beer and sausages, excellent automobiles, and kick-ass highway system? Is being proud of national achievements really fascist? Of course it isn't.
Fascism is the belief that society should be strictly controlled by a strong leader. Examples of Fascism in action are Fascist Italy and Spain and Nazi Germany during and before WWII. I have never advocated fascism and I never will. I believe strongly in freedom, democracy, and self-reliance. These are, by the way the cornerstones of American (US) philosophy of which we are likewise very proud.
A little known fact is the Soviet Union did get to the moon first. The United States manned moon landing was made shortly afterwards. Another fact is that without British and continental European assistance the United States would have come second in the manned programme. Rather than dwell on the PR oversights that encouraged you to come to the conclusions you have, I'm pleased to see Europe, Russia, China, India, and Japan, have started producing PR that better reflects their own considerable achievements.
I'm greatly encouraged by the enthusiasm with which many politicans and members of the public have shown towards Beagle. Putting technological achievements aside, this alone makes the project a success. Professor Pillinger is still of the belief that Beagle will bark, and isn't giving up hope until all possibilities have been exhausted. I share that belief. And that is probably the greatest triumph. Professor Pillinger has helped remind us what a sense of wonder and hope for a better world can achieve.
Ask 'em. Most people at NASA are happy to talk about their work. It's not generally classified, and there's no NDA. When the really obvious or cool stuff is prefaced with "Why didn't you..." the response is almost always "We thought about that, but we didn't have the -foo- budget". Where foo is time, money, materials, weight or space. Often there are lots of cool ideas and the end result is much more simple and less featureful... but the remaining features are rock solid and tested 20 times to Sunday.
Some features are also dropped because a team (sometimes in an outside company) couldn't deliver their package on deadline and fully tested. Each payload tends to have a couple dozen little projects each provided by some university. Sometimes when one project is trimmed, for structural or other reasons, a perfectly good project is also cut.
So there's lots of thought into these probes. An amazing amount. Pretty much anything that you think is stupid has been done for a reason, and the ultimate reason is "we didn't want the whole probe to fail, so we simplified it". It's a very expensive shot, and if the solar panels don't deploy because the mechanism was over-engineered and got brittle in space (cold + radiation), the whole project is dead.
Depending on where you live, NASA and JPL has a pretty good lecture circuit going, and they have speakers that really know their stuff... even the astronauts. They are incredibly conservative engineers, and it seems to me that they should be - even with very conservative engineering, keeping everything as simple and as tested as possible, they run into problems. On a shakedown cruise of a new battleship, they can dock back again if there's a problem... or just fix it at sea. NASA is using up massively complex systems that have to work the first time they are tested. And then the design is thrown away because tech (materials, computer and science knowledge) has advanced by the next time they shoot. Plus they are an open organization that works with hundreds of companies and universities and has to QA everything.
If it sounds like I'm awestruck by them, it's for a simple reason. Everytime I have ever talked to somebody from NASA or JPL about the details of space I have always been totally impressed by their operation.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien