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

Sod 'em

[RobertTaylor]

A good q & a on the inquiry

Professor Pillinger rejected the inquiry's findings as "wisdom after the event". He said: "The gains we could have made from Beagle far outweighed the risks."

Re:Spaceward Ho

[British-idiot]

WTF? Cusy jobs for scientists and engineers working for the government in the UK? Scientists held in respect by their society? Fuck me! I've been working my guts out in private industry when I could go and work for that nice Mr. Bliar and be well paid and loved. Hint for non-UK residents: London Tube underground train drivers earn more that most engineers and scientists do in the UK. The hardest thing those blokes have to do is to remember to press the dead-mans pedal every few seconds!

Freedom of Information Act request by NewScientist

[alanw]

The only reason that the report was released was that New Scientist Magazine made a request under the UK Freedom of Information Act that came into effect at the start of this year

The article can be read here

Re:Groups of three

[photonic]

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.

I don't know if that would have saved the mission. The report clearly hints that the failure could have been a design error due to bad management/lack of funding/lack of testing/lack of time. From the TFInquiry:
-Air-bag design not robust and the testing programme not sufficient;
-Risk of collision between the back cover and the main parachute;
-Re-bounding (up to 28mtr) of the air-bag/lander into the main parachute;
-Untimely release of the lander from the air-bag.
All four involve some luck but could also have been a major design error.

Doubling up the number of landers only helps against failures due to 'statistical bad luck'. If it was a design error (e.g. parachute to small, fatal error in software) nothing would have helped and you would have three craters instead of one. In case of the Mars Exploration Rovers the doubling worked out beautifully: they now have a double chance on getting good science. Similar for the Voyager probes. It is not always beneficial however: sending two orbiters a la Mars Global Surveyor would have lowered the mission risk, but it wouldn't have doubled the science in case of double success (each orbiter sees the whole planet).

Re:Just a guess.

[FrostedWheat]

That crater isn't believed to have been caused by Beagle 2. It's to large.

Here is the official site for details about that image: http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/31/