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."

Comments

Unrelated Question

[Bryan Ischo]

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?

Re:Has the atmosphere DRASTICALLY changed in 20 yr

[way2trivial]

Well let's see, the link I gave says (from viking)

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