Slashdot Mirror
Beagle 2 Failure Theories
Dan East writes "New Scientist has an article discussing the failure of ESA's Beagle 2 Lander. Theories as to why the landing failed include thinner than expected upper atmosphere, extreme atmospheric temperature fluctuations, and possible physical damage to Beagle 2 seen in an image acquired immediately after it separated from Mars Express. Recent data acquired by Mars Express, as well as NASA's Mars Rovers, are helping direct investigations into the failure. So far only around half of Beagle 2's landing ellipse has been imaged in an attempt to locate remnants of the lander. USA Today is also running an AP story on these latest theories."
My friends and I went to the NASA Ames Research Center Mars museum at Moffett Field yesterday and it was pretty cool, in a museum-for-kids kind of way. But there was one fact on display that I simply could not understand, and that the curator on duty could not help me with. I told my friend that I would ask Slashdot, where someone was sure to know, and was only joking, but now that this story has been posted (and although it's only loosely related), what the heck ...
The description of the rover module that is going to be deployed on one of the upcoming Mars missions states that it is designed to last for 3 months or until its solar panels become covered in Mars dust and it can no longer get the solar power that it needs. The question is, if they are going to send up a multi-multi-million dollar craft, why not put some simple wipers on the solar panels so that they can wipe off the dust and get some more use out of the thing?
The curator said that "five hundred people" before me had asked the same question, and that he had never been able to figure out the answer. And of course there MUST be a good reason for this; my closest guess is that the robot wouldn't last for more than 3 months anyway and so they don't bother to include the extra expense and complexity of a motorized wiper system just to keep its solar panels clean for longer than it is expected to live. But there must be a better reason than that, no?
Q.
Insert Signature Here
...that this organization does not tolerate
<nibbles pinky nail in pseudo-fascist solute>
failure...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
..it landed in a large pit of quicksand and sank.
Auto-check your UK lottery lines
...gravity had something to do with it.
Blarf.
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should have named it smeagle 2...
It was the Bunny Thing. Opportunity's next. Oh no!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Snoopy's Sopwith Camel doesn't look like it is set up well enough to survive re-entry.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
...it wasn't promised a treat or its favourite chew toy at the end of the mission.
what about possible sightings of the remains of the probe. i came across this story on cnn.
Houston, we have a problem: they stole our dog and replaced it with a stupid white frisbee.
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It appears that dust covering the solar panels is only one of a number of factors which will end up rendering the mars rover a paperweight.
. html
The dust on the solar panels appears to be complicated by the fact that the batteries "lose capactity" and (probably most importantly) the sun moves past the latitude where the rover is located. Just like days get shorter in the winter...
I guess it doesn't matter if your solar panels are clean if they aren't being exposed to the sun for an appreciable length of time.
All of this was grossly overinterpreted from an article lean on details... http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tl_surface
The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service
Beagle 2 may have sped to its death
17:52 08 March 04
NewScientist.com news service
The missing Beagle 2 lander may have crunched into the Martian dust after plummeting through an unexpectedly thin atmosphere.
New measurements from the spacecraft's mothership, Mars Express, suggest the upper atmosphere can be far less dense than anyone thought. This could have been fatal for the lander because it relied on the atmosphere's braking effect to trigger the release of its parachute.
If the main parachute opened too late, the probe would have the hit the ground too fast to survive. It may not even have had time to inflate the airbags intended to cushion its landing.
But this was only one of many gloomy scenarios that the project scientists are considering to explain why the probe has been silent since it was ejected from Mars Express on 19 December.
"We're analysing all the possible failure modes - and there are an awful lot", said Beagle 2 mission manager Mark Sims, at a meeting in London, UK, on Monday.
Rapid fluctuation
Other atmospheric factors being considered include turbulence. After NASA's rover Spirit landed it measured the temperature of the atmosphere in the kilometre above it.
The temperature was fluctuating very rapidly - on a timescale of seconds. If the same thing was happening at the Beagle 2 landing site, the severe turbulence could, says Sims, have collapsed the parachute.
Another line of investigation has been prompted by a picture of Beagle 2, snapped as it was ejected from Mars Express. The receding probe is half in shadow, but within the shadow there is a bright glint. This is cause for concern because the probe's surface should be smooth.
"It may be nothing, it may be everything" said Sims. The object could be one of the explosive bolts used to secure the probe to its host during take-off. More worryingly, it could be something that broke off Beagle 2, or a wrinkle in the insulation wrapping the probe.
Scouring the surface
Whilst the team analyse these scenarios, a NASA satellite is being used to scour the surface of Mars for signs of the lander. The camera on the Mars Global Surveyor, with a resolution of 1.6 metres per pixel, should be able to spot the remnants of the parachutes, air-bags or even the white shell that enclosed Beagle 2's innards. The camera has already been used to pin-point the positions of the NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
Subscribe to New Scientist for more news and features
Related Stories
Hope all but gone for Beagle 2
7 January 2004
Beagle stays silent as possible failures are mooted
30 December 2003
Beagle 2 successfully separates from mothership
19 December 2003
For more related stories
search the print edition Archive
Weblinks
Beagle 2
Mars Express
NASA's rovers - Spirit and Opportunity
About half of Beagle 2's 60-kilometre-long landing ellipse has now been scanned, and bright white pixels have been picked out in two images, taken near the end of February.
In one, the white spots sit on the rim of a crater. These may turn out to be boulders. The second image shows four white pixels in a line. Dubbed the "string of pearls", this could be the lander, perhaps entangled in its parachute. But it is more likely that the "pearls" were produced by noise in the camera, perhaps caused by cosmic rays.
However the Beagle 2 team have asked for a higher resolution close-up of the "string of pearls", and more pictures will be taken this week. It is a race against time, says Colin Pillinger, the lander's lead scientist: "We run the risk that by the end of March a thin veneer of dust may have covered up the evidence."
Finding debris on the surface might at least reveal at what stage the mission failed. But if neither of the probe's two parachutes opened, Beagle 2 may be forever undetectable - b
The most likely candidate as an explaination of failure is simply human error. There are rarely errors in electronics that are not caused by humans that could cause such a massive loss. Usually, errors in hardware do not exist, as the hardware is top of the line and checked and re-checked for defects. (Granted, however, that sometimes faulty hardware may slip through the cracks) It is most likely something simpler than "it landed in a crater full of quicksand and sank." However entertaining it may be to picture a multi-million dollar rover sinking into the martian soil, it simply is impossible. To create quicksand one needs water. Even though the Spirit and Opportunity rovers found evidence of water on Mars, it was a long time ago, not today, that Mars was wet. So that simply is not feasible. Space debris, while a popular theory, is so unlikely (the chances of a meteor hitting something in the middle of space are *chuckle* ASTRONOMICAL) So this leaves us with simple human error. Something as simple as a single line of code can destroy an entire project (programmers know what I'm talking about). If you will remember, a few years back NASA lost a multi-million dollar spacecraft because of an error converting from the English system to the Metric system, so it is usually something tiny like that. If you asked me, it's most likely that someone typed an extra "0" somewhere in the code for orbital data and/or surface descent for the capsule. Even though it is just one "0", over that long of a distance it would make a huge difference. Remember that each decimal place is a factor of 10! Telling a spacecraft to orbit at "100,000" miles above the surface is a whole lot different than telling the spacecraft to orbit at "1,000,000" miles above the surface. Such an error would just send the poor Beagle 2 hurtling into the vast reaches of space or crashing to the surface. So it is most likely something like this that has caused all the trouble with the Beagle 2 and given those poor Brits such a hard time.
The story says that the American missions landed without a probablem. That was due to their, "robust" airbags. We also spent over twice as much as they did. So when we encounter things we do not except everything still goes ok. When it comes to space flight, I don't mind spending alot of money, as long as that means everything will work out, or close to it. Instead of spending the extra money on the project( Europe ), they decided to waste 370 million, and have nothing to show for it except failure.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
From what I read, they didnt fully test Beagle. I believe NASA found out that their parachute didnt work for the rovers in the beginning, and they tested at Ames Research wind tunel. I bet the same with Beagle. The parachute didnt work and probably shred into pieces. Of course if the parachute is shredded, the Beagle probably did land about 25 feet beneath the martian soil :D
Who modded this major dick funny?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
$370 millions for hitting a rock on Mars.
Now that's expensive science project.
"...and possible physical damage to Beagle 2..."
...could have been caused by the Mars Rover ripping off the protective clothing of the Beagle 2! I see nipple ring here people!
I submitted a NASA-related story that was accepted nearly 48 hours ago, but has never appeared. Has anyone noticed whether Slashdot is running that far behind on its queue, or did my story go the way of the Beagle 2?
"It may be nothing, it may be everything" said Sims. The object could be one of the explosive bolts used to secure the probe to its host during take-off. More worryingly, it could be something that broke off Beagle 2, or a wrinkle in the insulation wrapping the probe.
And on and on it goes. Kingdoms and spacecraft get lost on a dime, these days.
Stop installing WindowsME on multi-billion dollar space exploration devices.
That really is my homepage, no kidding.
A wiper on the panels is like a spare wheel for a car with a bad transmission.
The dust will settle on the panels in x amount of time, but by then the batteries won't be able to recharge and there will be other mechanical problems.
I find these memes a little interesting. There's always something the 'eggheads forgot' according to the common man and its easy to believe. A related meme is how Einstein was a terrible math student when he was young. In reality, he did fine in math when he was young. I guess believing in this kind of stuff makes you feel better knowing that you're "better" than "smart people" and that life is very simple and requires simple solutions.
Then again, the conversion error from metric to imperial that caused another mars bound space-probe to fail fuels this fire, but is very much an exception and not the rule.
I just figured it had run off with a poodle, until I learned that there are no poodles on Mars. Then I though it landed in a puddle, until I was told there are no puddles on Mars. I guess that rules out a poodle puddle too.
Sometimes dogs just run off for no reason.
Anti-gravity? That was *my* little secret! But I never patented it! Boy, was *that* dumb!
CNN has the scoop.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Thanks for the link to the "damage" photo. It makes it all so clear. It's my own fault for reading the articles...
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
i didnt see them mention the possibility that the thing may have just been poorly engineered, like NASA's Mars Polar Lander and the DS2 probes.
There was no beagle. They were go to fake it in the desert but then they had union problems.
I think this internet thing sounds like a good idea
Similar to what grand prix drivers have on their visors? If an existing appendage on the rover could hook up with a tag and pull such a layer of film off a panel then that could double the solar panels lifetime with little extra weight or complexity?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Obviously, the clarity is lost on slashdot readers. It is quite obvious that the subsurface dwellers of Mars did not want that probe to work.
Here's why:
The Martian underlords had a secret pact with Russia and the United States, ever since we became a spacefaring people. They told us what to ignore and where not to look.
Apparently, the UK did not get the memo.
When the Martians discovered that the probe was heading straight for their hidden subsurface entrance, they immediately vaporized with a heat ray.
I believe that my explanation has more plausability, and really goes to what everyone, deep down, really believes.
here's my lame solution..
cover the panels with multiple layers of clear material, something between a a chunk of mica,and layers of saranwrap-- say, 10 layers, one atop the other- at the far end (out from the body) each layer is attached in the corners like a yoke (y shape from spindle to the corners) to a thread, when the top layer gets dusty, have a small motor reel in the thread- peeling away the top layer (which falls to the wayside) the next thread being under the layer above just removed.. (not flopping around)
all it requires is a motor with a spindle, monofiliment, and the layers of clear material.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The reason is that Beagle 2 spent too much time partying, getting high, having dirty monkey sex with cute English lit student.... No... wait... That's how I failed my first year at uni.
wouldn't a positive charge on the surface of the panel keep dust away?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The thing tried to enter the Martian atmosphere on the wrong side of the orbital plane. It probably collided with some old American piece of hardware gliding on the left side of the orbit. Pesky brits.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Some curator.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
NASA's Viking Mission to Mars was composed of two spacecraft, Viking 1 and Viking 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander. The primary mission objectives were to obtain high resolution images of the Martian surface, characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface, and search for evidence of life.
how does that mean they had no idea the air was so thin?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Shitty engineering.
Don'tcha just love how it's always somebody else's fault when something breaks? Noooo, it's never OUR fault! Nevermind the fact that our airbags failed during testing, so we replaced them with an UNTESTED design before launch! No way it could be that!
"A Tiger Killed It"
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
RTFA. The point is that this data is inaccurate, because the atmosphere shows hitherto-unkown extreme fluctuations of pressure and temperature. It was not a problem for the NASA landers which decelerated on rockets, but it could have been a problem for Beagle since it relied on parachutes to turn a fall into a landing.
I warned them Avian Carriers couldn't survive in a vacuum.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
UFO's to be precise!
General Dick did.
Landed in the area of Martian CIA base. Neutralised with death ray. Kind of obvious when you think about it.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/08/mars.beag le.reut/index.html
==================
Possible sighting of Beagle probe
Monday, March 8, 2004 Posted: 6:43 PM EST (2343 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Beagle 2, the British space probe which disappeared as it descended towards Mars, may have been spotted on the surface of the Red Planet, scientists say.
No signal has been received from the craft since it was due to land on Christmas Day last year, despite various attempts by Mars orbiters and telescopes on Earth to make contact.
But photographic images of the area where Beagle 2 was to have come down show four bright spots, dubbed a "string of pearls" by scientists, which may be the remains of the probe.
"It could be the lander with its air bags and parachute," said Lutz Richter from the German Aerospace Center, who helped plan the Beagle 2 project as part of Europe's first solo mission to another planet.
[in some way I mean to be serious too..]
Use of wipers or brushes would be a Russian solution to the problem.
True American spirited solutions would require a dual processor system to control a robot arm using at least:
1 a hover device;
2 2 cameras to register 3d;
3 a brush;
Instead I would opt for the use of "Quick and Brite" the difficulty here is to apply it on the panels. Best way arround that is to ship "Quick and Brite" complete with the TellSell presenter guy...
oh... and in Russia wipers wipe you.
Other ideas besides a wiper:
- A blower. Puffing air to get rid of the dust.
- Tip the panel to dump the dust off.
- Like the blower, but instead move the panels through the air. (depends on how thin the air is.)
- Solve the problem at the root cause - prevent the buildup in the first place by using some areodynamics - shape a shield that will make air carrying the dust blow around the panels and not touch them.
- Cover the panel with a see-through plastic sheet on a roller that will roll around to bring some new clean surface around, like the things they used to have on overhead projectors, then the life is just limited by how much extra plastic sheeting you can afford to add to the payload. (Or, make it go circularly around and run through a wiper on the way around and get re-used, like they do for the shield in front of the in-car cameras at auto races. But then you have to weigh the benefit of the washer against the weight of the washer - it might be more effective to just carry more plastic and use it up as you go.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"Mr. Connery, are you english or retarded?"
CNN says theyve found it http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/08/mars. beagle.reut/index.html.
--aiee
Radio stolen. "Humanz go home" sprayed on the body.
Surface pressure: 6.36 mb at mean radius (variable from 4.0 to 8.7 mb depending on season)
[6.9 mb to 9 mb (Viking 1 Lander site)]
Surface density: ~0.020 kg/m3
Scale height: 11.1 km
Total mass of atmosphere: ~2.5 x 1016 kg
Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 C)
Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)
Wind speeds: 2-7 m/s (summer), 5-10 m/s (fall), 17-30 m/s (dust storm) (Viking Lander sites)
Mean molecular weight: 43.34 g/mole
Atmospheric composition (by volume):
Major : Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - 95.32% ; Nitrogen (N2) - 2.7%
Argon (Ar) - 1.6%; Oxygen (O2) - 0.13%; Carbon Monoxide (CO) - 0.08%
Minor (ppm): Water (H2O) - 210; Nitrogen Oxide (NO) - 100; Neon (Ne) - 2.5;
Hydrogen-Deuterium-Oxygen (HDO) - 0.85; Krypton (Kr) - 0.3;
Xenon (Xe) - 0.08
now- from pathfinder Meteorology
It was mid-summer in the northern hemisphere of Mars when Pathfinder landed. The Pathfinder Lander is at 19.33 N, 33.55 W. The Viking 1 Lander touched down at 22 N, 50 W, 2 km below datum elevation on 20 July 1976, and is used for many of the comparisons below.
The pressures measured over the first three days average about 6.75 mb, 10% to 20% smaller than those recorded by the Viking 1 Lander during the same season 21 years ago (note that this result is consistent with the elevation difference of about 100 meters between the Mars Pathfinder and Viking 1 landing sites). The pressure showed a slight decline over the first few weeks but is now starting to rise slowly. This rise should continue through December, 1997. The pressure rise is concurrent with the slow shrinking of the southern polar cap, now at its maximum extent, as the southern winter ends.
Temperatures measured from the top of the 1 meter mast on Mars Pathfinder varied from daily highs of about 260 K (+8 F) to lows of 196 K (-107 F). This is about 10 K degrees (18 F degrees) warmer than Viking 1 Lander measurements made at 1.6 meters. The sol-to-sol temperatures have been very repeatable over the first 30 sols, and should continue until about 60 sols after landing, after which they will start to show more variation.
Preliminary wind speed estimates give late evening and early morning prevailing winds from the SSE, which shifted in the early afternoon to be from the N to NE. This is very similar to what Viking 1 found at this time of year. During the day, winds were light at only a few km or miles per hour. At night the wind speed increased to about 10 to 20 mph (16 - 32 kph) from the south.
The repeatable weather patterns of northern summer found by Viking 1 have been verified by Pathfinder so far. These include diurnal (day-night) pressure changes and semi-diurnal changes by as much as 4.5% due to atmospheric thermal tides.
Interruptions in the normal pattern of temperature drops observed on a few nights may indicate water in the atmosphere is condensing as fog. Humidity measurements are planned later in the mission.
On sol 25, temperature sampling was done at 4-second intervals for the whole day. Temperature fluctuations by 15 to 20 K (30 to 40 degrees F) were observed over minutes or seconds at some periods, suggesting turbulent boundary-layer mixing between the warmer near-surface region and cooler layers above that. A "dust devil" was also detected passing by the lander on sol 25, and later high resolution sampling has detected more dust devil signatures.
More detailed information and historical weather reports are available at the Mars Pathfinder project weather page. Raw and reduced data are available online at http://atmos.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/mpam_0001/aareadme. htm
Pathfinder used a parachute... didn't anyon notice how hard it hit? the fact that pressure and temperatures change so mu
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
why not stick a magnet to the bottom of the solar panels?
Both rovers carry magnets supplied by Denmark for experiments to analyze martian dust. Dust covers much of Mars' surface and hangs in the atmosphere, occasionally rising into giant dust storms. One of the magnets is designed to exclude any magnetic dust particles from landing in the center of a target area. During Spirit's time on Mars, dust has accumulated on other parts of the target while the center has remained "probably the cleanest area anywhere on the surface of the rover," said Dr. Morten Madsen, science team member from the Center for Planetary Science, Copenhagen, Denmark.
"Most, if not all of the dust particles in the martian atmosphere are magnetic," Madsen said. Another of the magnets is within reach of the rover's robotic arm. Examination of dust on the target by instruments on the end of the arm will soon yield further information about the composition of the dust, he said.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'm a member, (Fly by Night) but the system would not let me log in.
The wipers don't have to run continuously. They only have to run when a sensor says the solar panels are covered with dust. (Once each week? or each month?) All NASA nneds to do is design the solar panel surface for an occasional "dry rub".
One problem is that, when the Earth moves past Mars in its orbit, more power is needed to get the signal to a receding Earth.
This is true, but why not put a satellite in synchronous orbit around Mars to pick up surface signals, boost them and beam them to Earth. The orbiting craft would not have dust problems, could have bigger solar panels and boost signals from more than one lander. It could also point a camera on new landers and send back pictures of them as they pass by and land (or not?).
--------------
My Clan Motto: Veritas Vincit: Truth Conquers
Time for my medication ...
What if they included some sort of fan to blow the dust off? This would be incredibly simple to add onto a rover and would definately not scratch the panels. How about it?
In order for NASA to understand the presentation, the ESA had to convert it to PowerPoint format.
I'm hoping the next rover (or the next one to built) will sport some elegant new hack suggested by some Jane Average.
The next planned Mars rover is the Mars Science Laboratory to be launched in 2009. It will be five times larger than the current rovers and will be powered by a plutonium RTG, giving it at least a year, probably more, of operation. Check out the link for details on its proposed landing method. Very cool.
Hit the water on Mars first...
Look, people, it doesn't get any clearer than this!
"Mission controllers said they were also considering the possibility that Beagle 2 simply crashed onto the surface of Mars because its atmosphere was less dense than expected."
We must act now to shut down Mars' mass destruction program (codenamed "ground"). Our probes simply cannot survive such an unequal mass collsion. Once we have established a permanent base on the Moon, we will be able to strike back at these terrorists.
Here come da fudge!
It was designed by the French. It simply gave up and quit.
It was designed by the English. The re-entry engineers got right pissed at the pub and started a drunken brawl with the aeronautics lads, who calculated that delta V makes a lot more sense with a beer bottle in the midst of it.
It was designed by the Irish, who gave up calculus for Lent.
It was designed by the Germans. Beagle was properly engineered, but poorly manufactured by the Belgians, who nobody really knows anything about anyway.
It was designed by the Spanish. It's not a communications failure, just a long siesta. Relax.
It was designed by the Polish. 'Nuff said.
Our spaceprogram is certainly modest compared to yours, but ESA is working hard towards some great goals in the future. Check out the ESA homepage for info on the different space science projects, such as Planck, Rosetta, Venus Express... and add to that the bold new program Aurora, which aims to put men on the moon as well as Mars. I certainly hope it will happen some day. And I also hope that ESA's budget will be greatly increased.
How about the Open University opening the software so that many eyes can see if we can find any bugs?
They showed the parachute being tested on the local news here in the East of England a couple of years ago. First was footage of the NASA parachute test rig being flown beneath a B-52 with chase planes flying next to it. Cut to a shot of the Beagle parachute test: a bloke in a tethered hot air balloon above some bleak East Anglian airfield. The test consisted of him chucking the chute out of the basket with an iron weight attached. Then cut to testing parachute lift by towing it behind a Land Rover in a hangar. Total cost looked like maybe five hundred quid.
it's all a huge waste of money.. satelites okay, but little remote control cars on mars?? give me a break. I don't think the fact that there is water on pluto or pvc lining around our universe is really going to make the slightest difference to the price of a pint.
Both the CNN article you referenced, as well as the articles in the story, state that the "string of pearls" is probably not the rover, and was most likely caused by cosmic radiation interfering with the camera.
Dubbed the "string of pearls", this could be the lander, perhaps entangled in its parachute. But it is more likely that the "pearls" were produced by noise in the camera, perhaps caused by cosmic rays.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
We can't accurately predict the atmosphere (weather) here on earth, even with dozens of satellites, hundreds of radar stations, and thousands of automated stations that monitor localized atmospheric conditions. How do you expect ESA to predict the weather on Beagle 2's landing day using 20 year old data?
If you'll remember, NASA adjusted the Rover's landing parameters immediately before landing, forcing the parachute to deploy sooner to compensate for lower atmospheric density. That very well may have saved the mission, because the chute still deployed at a lower altitude than expected.
Either Beagle 2's landing sequence was such that it could not be tweaked en route, or ESA overlooked the opportunity to make such an adjustment.
A final note. Many have suggested that spacecraft, such as the Mars Rovers, use nuclear power instead of solar power to vastly increase their operational lives. One of the main excuses I've seen to NOT use such power (besides the lobbying of tree-huggers) is to purposefully limit the mission lifetime, so resources can quickly be shifted to new science. However the 3 recent landings (Rovers and Beagle 2) have shown we do need to keep track of the weather on Mars a bit closer. If the rovers had a nuclear power source then once they broke down (as in not able to drive around or operate the arm), they could become fixed position weather stations. The data provided could aid in adjusting future landings, which could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
if you build them they will come
(they being the windscreen washer people)
... but nobody is willing to admit the truth.
It was destroyed in an Earth-shattering kaboom by Marvin the Martian and his Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
Isn't that lovely?
Last night, the Royal Society webcast an interview with Pillinger. It's due to be available on demand soon. In answer to the many points about 'reinventing the wheel', it's claimed (about 3/4 the way in) that ESA weren't allowed access to Nasa airbag technology.
You know what I miss? Leeches.
Any additional layers on top of the solor panels would drastically affect their effeciency meaning less power for the rover. Any film is going to reflect and absorb sunlight that would have gone into the solar cell. I'm sure that they have looked into many different technologies and they are doing the best they can. Its very easy to play armchair engineer and critize from the sidelines, but simply proposing an idea that seems simple can often be difficult to actually implament.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
As Mars Express closed in on the planet, astronomers noticed a large dust storm building on the planet. Martian storms are unusual in that they markedly heat the atmosphere. As dust particles are swept up into the air, they absorb solar radiation and radiate heat - warming the atmosphere, increasing the force of the wind and so raising more dust. As the air warms, it expands and pressure drops.
All three landers were committed to landing on Mars at a particular time from the moment they blasted off. Unlike Viking, which could sit in orbit and wait for ideal conditions, they had to land directly. The two NASA landers had a larger safety margin and made it to the surface, Beagle 2 had almost none and may simply have landed too fast.
Unfortunately having a stand-off orbiter is expensive in terms of weight and neither the Delta IV nor the Soyuz/Fregat could have sent a useful orbiter and a lander to Mars. The alternative would have been to use the much bigger Titan IV or Proton rockets.
And this isn't the first time a Mars lander has been affected by adverse weather, the Soviet Union's Mars 3 became the first craft to land on Mars in 1971. It touched down in the midst of a dust storm and returned data for only 20 seconds before mysteriously falling silent. The Soviets believed that its antenna had been knocked out of alignment by the storms.
Best wishes,
Mike.
IIRC they tweaked the programming on the second lander following Spirit's descent to the surface and analysing its data. This was the first indication that the pressure was lower than expected.
Either Beagle 2's landing sequence was such that it could not be tweaked en route, or ESA overlooked the opportunity to make such an adjustment.
Beagle 2 could receive software upgrades in-flight, but by the time NASA measured the pressure in the atmosphere, Beagle 2 was long-lost.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Great idea, but instead of using an arm to remove it ... just place a wound coil at one end. When it is time to remove the strip, a latch releases the coil and the strip is pulled away. Mechanically trivial. And the energy is already stored in the simple coil prior to launch.
I seem to recall it was eaten by a mutant space goat... or was it used as ball in a game of galactic ultra-cricket?
...they ruled out this theory...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The first thing that springs to mind is that any kind of wiper wiping dust across could scratch the panels
And that was the first thing I thought of too, but then a simple rational hit me-- if you're going to end up writing off your multi-million dollar probe due to dust buildup anyway, you might as well scratch some solar panels and extend that life. Wait till it gets bad, dust, bad, dust... At that points there's no reason NOT to do it.
Weight is a legitimate issue, but then, how much could a wiper wiper assembly possibly weigh? Of course, everything had to be built to withstand the rigors of reentry, so who knows.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
At th end of their mission the rovers will only be active every other day or 3rd day, etc. in order allow more battery charging.
Not a bad idea. I suppose, had the Mars Climate Orbiter not failed due to imperial-to-metric conversion error, better data might have been available to the ESA Beagle and NASA MER mission teams.
Our friends across the pond, while certainly full of charm and wit, have a rough go of it when it comes to this sort of thing:
Chap 1: I say, do you think the brass retractor actuator performed aforementioned retraction?
Chap 2: Rather not, one would think. Tea?
Chap 1: Splendid!
In particular, the Beagle2 was released by Mars Express a heckuva long way from the planet. Even the _slightest_ deviance from the carefully calculated course at that distance could result in the Beagle missing the planet completely, to say nothing of missing the target area. When Mars Express entered Martian orbit, they announced that although it was working perfectly, it was in a slightly different orbit than what they had expected. This only furthers the premise that the Beagle2 may have been slightly off course as well. And unlike the Mars Express, the Beagle2 had no navigational equipment to help it correct any errors that could have been otherwise noticed as it drew closer to the planet.
I think that the Beagle2 would have been a brilliant success if they had been willing to spend a little more and at least equip the Beagle with it's own basic navigational equipment and propulsion. Not a lot, mind you.. just enough fuel to make minor navigation adjustments that could very well turn out to be necessary after separation, as well as maybe helping to slow the Beagle down when it got close enough.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
the 'duster'. It's a brush that rotates and sweeps shit off of solar panels.
NASA I 0wn700.
You could use a magnet to wipe off the dust, since most dust on mars is magnetic. Here is the article, look at the last 3 paragraphs.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Another ideas: battery-station with solar rollers as a oil's station for the rover, rover with solar rollers as a boat, ship or plane.
Forget the imperial system forever!!! (it's for museum)
open4free (c)
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
Press any key when ready
This has been done before. I know this is slashdot, but there must be motorsports geeks out there. Ever see the cameras on top of race cars? The have a clear membrane over the lens. The membrane is wound onto 2 spools, kinda like a tape. Then when the lens gets dirty, a motor turns the spools, and a fresh piece is moved in front of the lens.
Two Martians are sunning themselves on a dune when a crack is heard from the sky, and then the probe hurtles down to crash nearby in the dust. All is still for a second or two, leaving the Martians to muse. Then, several explosive bolts go off and the landing cushions attempt to inflate.
One Martian looks at the other, rolls his 3 eyes, and says "Well, that proves it. There's no intelligent life on Earth."
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
What do you expect from the land of the 35-hour work week? 5 more hours could have made useful solar cells. Shame, shame.
it with. Maybe they should know better than to open any email from something called Beagle right now. Hehehehe...
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
Hey guys...I've seen several of the articles talking about the Beagle 2 being shown in images indicating a "string of pearls"...but in none of the articles I've seen has images of this "string of pearls" been shown. Anyone have a link on this?
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
look!
if i hear one more person call it a swifter...i don't even know...*tears hair out*
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Have a beer or two. Do some yoga. Get a massage... You're gonna be taking blood pressure pills within a year I'm predicting, hehe.
//FIXME: Bad
While much of this discussion has been devoted to general ranting about wipers on Beagle, does anyone actually know if rubber wiper blades are used? I can't see the boys who designed the thing overlooking the fact that dust scratches. If there is no water in the atmosphere on Mars, the dust won't stick in the sense we know it, but mainly through charge. The simplest way would be to wipe with an impregnated cloth as we used to do with vinyl records. Surely they'd use something similar and not just the rubber blades off an old Morris Minor?
The rover will last and run long past the published 3 months.
It is mearly an excuse to tell the public... well the rover is covered with dust and is no longer working, while they seceretly continue to use it for uncovering the biological history of mars without public scrutiny.
120 days of usage? what would the 'rover'/'beagle 2' look like if both were designed for 10 years of usage?
it looks like the above units could use a machine that cleans up after the units. its call sign could be 'hazel' - Handles Any Zoned Engineering Limitations.
i would have called it 'mother', but i couldn't figure out how to make a acronym for it...
off topic question:
given the water evidence, how do you search for fossils?
What creates the belief that we cannot do is cultural mindsets left over from the not-so-long-ago days when we couldn't, and idiots that don't understand that a 20% chance of rain does not mean it will rain only 20% of the day.
The first occurance of the term "Reversing the polarity" in a science fiction film was probably The Forbidden Planet (MGM 1956).
t ml
The term was used in a transitional sequence where Starcruiser C57D approaches Altair 4.
Its hard to overstate the influence this film had on budding techies. Apparantly Gene (Star Trek) Rodenbury was influenced by it.....
http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/forbiddenp.sh
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue97/sound.html
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Problem one: it was sent into space by the ESA. That pretty much explains it.