Beagle 2 Official Inquiry Released

smasch writes "The ESA/UK Commission of Inquiry into Beagle 2 has released their report (PDF) on why the Mars lander Beagle 2 failed. While the report does not name a single cause for the failure, it does name several problems including the lack of funding, lack of margin in the design, and treating Beagle 2 as a scientific instrument rather than as a spacecraft. The report also made nineteen recommendations to prevent these sorts of failures on future missions. We have previously mentioned the Beagle 2 failure, although the official report was not released to the public at that time. The original story from MarsToday.com is available here."

Comments

Lessons learned report

[Realistic_Dragon]

1) Do not do calculations requiring a high degree of accuracy on a Pentium.

Re:Lessons learned report

[quarkscat]

(2) Avoid mixing Imperial and SI units in
your calculations (thanks NASA & Lockheed)

I would like to appologise.

[Anonymous Coward]

For playing with my shiny new green laser pointer and shooting down beagle 2 by mistaking it for an aircraft.

Critical lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rule #1: Don't Have the British build the electronic parts"

Re:Groups of three

[zenmojodaddy]

I thought Martians were supposed to send landers HERE in groups of three. Perhaps we should give the next-generation Beagles a bunch of death-rays as well?

Standard Boilerplate Recommendation #1

[Citizen of Earth]

1) The team conducting this study strongly recommends that the members of this team receive substantially more funding in the future.

Re:Groups of three

[Tablizer]

They should send three nearly identical copies of the same lander (re-using the same design and development effort), and have them land close enough to communicate directly with each other by radio....This way, if one lander loses the ability to communicate with the orbiters or with Earth, or even two of them lose it, the third can relay their data.

Cotcha trying to imagine a beowulf cluster of probes