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Beagle 3 Plans Revealed
Richard W.M. Jones writes "While the UK's
Beagle 2
may have been a well-publicised failure,
the same team claims to have learned lessons
and are now developing
plans for
Beagle 3.
The new probe might be attached to
a European mission due to launch in
2009 as part of Europe's Aurora project."
beagle 1, here's your answer.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Will be a gun with a flashlight!
And in related news today, Symantec Corporation announced that it has developed innoculation files for the W32.Beagle.3@mm virus. Symantec officials commented that there is no apparent link between Beagle.2 and the crash of the Beagle lander, but it is not taking any chances.
the same team claims to have learned lessons
Translation: They're going to paint it flourescent green so they can tell where it crashed.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Mars's composition is mainly... Beagle material.
Step 2: Double check that antenna is attached really firmly.
Step 3: Make sure antenna is hooked to transmitter.
Step 4: Be sure you didn't disconnect the antenna when checking the transmitter.
John
I thought one of the reasons cited for the failure of Beagle 2 was the very fact that it was piggybacked on a separate agency's orbiter. Now they're contradicting themselves, and saying they'll try it again?
Advances in solar cell technology mean the craft will be able to cope with half the number of solar panels its predecessor carried: it will open up to reveal two panels rather than previous four.
So now there is a 50% greater chance of catastrophic energy collection failure. Check.
The craft's UHF antenna (identical to that on Beagle 2) is positioned on the top panel, so the motorised fanfold mechanism ensures it always points upwards for communication.
So now when the "fanfold mechanism" for that panel fails we lose communications along with half the power. Check.
Engineers stressed, however, that this was a preliminary proposal and the design would continue to "evolve".
Let's hope so.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
It's almost as if they don't speak english.
See what I've been reading.
You never name a ship after a spectacular failure
Would you sail on the Titanic II
Maybe because the rovers were only designed to do one thing really well, and the Beagle probe was designed to do some other thing really well?
Let's hope they do a better job than JPL...
How do you convert slugs to metric anyway?
Should you avoid putting salt on its tail?
Points to mars
Fetch Beagle2 boy, good boy Beagle3, fetch.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...sending a lander to intercept one of the mars rovers, breaking off the NASA antennas, installing a proper British antenna, and placing a Beagle 3 plaque on it.
Mars Expensive Hardware Lob - The Mars Scorecard - 20:17 with Earth losing
c or ecard.html
http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/marss
Don't hit the ground so hard.
Thats quite funny.
Reality check:
Real ale is typically served at celar temperature, (below room tempererature), so it's refreshing. It is typically served a few degrees warmer than a block of ice because there's no need to numb your taste buds unlike certain "beers" which
if you could taste you wouldn't drink.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
The two NASA rovers are robotic Geologists'.
The Beagles' are robotic Chemists.
While the NASA robots have done a good job in the "Hummm thats interesting" way of Geology, if Beagle 2 had landed, we would know if life had existed in that area of Mars. Indeed, the head of the Beagle project has critised the two NASA rovers for lacking anything to conduct any real science.
It is reasons like this that we need to send more robots. Beagle 2 cost a mere fraction of either of the two NASA rovers and they in turn cost a hell of a lot less than a manned mission.
Until money is not an object (ie like in the original space race, aka "beat the commies/capitalist pig dogs"), a manned mission won't happen. This is the next best thing.
"would have a mass at entry into the Martian atmosphere of about 131kg"
BAD science reporter! BAD! no treat for you.
...I got nothing.
MPs blame lack of cash for failure of Beagle 2
The most recent report on the failure of Beagle II, done by the House of Commons Science and Technology select committee sighted many "amateurish" funding woes and a lack of cooperation between the USA and the UK government as the underlying cause of failure. Pillenger responded by saying that they couldn't get guarantees of funding mostly because those groups didn't have the money to give. But what does that say about the success of the next project if the funding for Beagle II was dependant on groups that couldn't afford to guarantee funding but said they'd try to find the money anyway...and then failed to do so, unless they go at the next mission with a different attitude?
NASA has backed off of its Faster-Better-Cheaper which left faster and cheaper intact, while somewhat disregarding better, in favor of Faster-Better-Fund_Projects_Appropriatly...which seems certainly to have done the trick for such projects as the Mars Exploration Rovers, which (I would agrue appropriatly) cost hundreds of millions of dollars to properly build and test for the challenges they were being asked to face.
So I'm as happy as anyone (except maybe Dr. Pillinger :-) to see that they're going for it. From a JPL-based Martian to my friends on the Beagle 3 team (and at ESA), best of luck with Beagle 3!
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins