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.

Comments

next time

[WormholeFiend]

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??

Re:next time

[Sloppy]

Clearly, these rocket scientists are stupider than a typical Slashdotter. Next time, they ought to just Ask Slashdot before sending a probe, so that smart people like you can come up with ideas that they never would have thought of.

I'm European

[jawtheshark]

...and I'm sad it is down...

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.

Man, what a pain

[Raul654]

Retrieving the black box is going to be a *bitch* :)

The Beagle 2 finally sent a reply.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'Beagle 2' finally sent the first pictures and an explaination why it didn't sent earlier click here.

Re:Calling it quits?

[TehHustler]

They're in completely different places, and each MER can move at 0.02 MPH, top ;) So, not a chance :(

Re:Let me condense the relevant info further

[Doomrat]

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.

Re:Still no luck

[NanoGator]

"I've been crossing my eyes at Nasa's Mars photos for half an hour and I still can't see a beagle!"

Dupe.

On the plus side, though, you're well on your way to becoming a Slashdot editor.

How can this be "interesting" ?

[Space cowboy]

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.

Re:Correction

[Naffer]

Pinging beagle-2.co.uk with 32 bytes of data
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for beagle-2.co.uk:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

someone will stumble over Beagle2

[theCat]

...while playing a round of golf. Or hiking in a crater. Or retrieving a poorly aimed frisbee. Pausing, they'll see some badly eroded pile of something shiny, walk over to look at it closer, recall a paragraph from their early astrophysics lessons, and radio back to the colony base "Hey Rosco, wasn't it somewhere around here that Beagle2 was lost? Back in '03? Well it's not lost anymore."

Yes, I'm talking about humans on Mars, being casual and knocking about the place, kicking over rocks on a lazy day, sometime in my lifetime. It could be my son or daughter grown up. Or your own, or even yourself if you are young now. Keep that in mind today, it helps to take the edge off this sort of temporary setback.

Re:Possibly should have been called Icarus :-(

[gangien]

since I made this comment that got modded to hell and flamed and whatever else, lemme repond.

Every article on /. or much of anyplce i seem to go online, seems to be have a very anti-US flavo(u)r to it. Here we have a very good example of what the US does well. We have 2 of these things going to Mars, 1 has suceeded, one is due there later, we have that probe or whatever its called collect comet dust, then we have the ESA we a failed mission to Mars. So basically, we're not allowed to point out what we do well, even though everyone can point out all our failings?

And also, what's wrong with competition? I like any type of game/sport whatever thats clean(where the rules are followed) and competitive. I think it's fun and I think the results are much better. Who do you play harder against, some stranger you've never met and will never see again, or your best friend whom will probably try and improve and beat you? Your best friend of course, because of competition, even if afterwards you go have a beer together and hardly think about it again. Personally, I'd love to see another space race minus the 10ks Nukes aimed at each other. Even though I'm sure every nuclear country has figured out how to nuke every other country.

So my response, and I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, is more in retaliation against all the anti-us stuff than being anti-europe.

Re:Calling it quits?

[Eccles]

You're calling the people who built, launched and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space and landed it on another planet stupid?

Hey, it's not rocket sci -- er, um, never mind.