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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."
But could the failure of the Beagle 2 have been due to it's cratering in the Martian dirt?
Add to that the attempt to design the Beagle 2 as a "bolt-on" experiment instead of a separate spacecraft (which it would be during separation, re-entry and landing) meant that the Beagle 2 was doomed. The myriad possible failure modes highlight how bad this decision was.
Of course, because no one thought to have telemetry from the Beagle 2 once it separated - only after it landed safely - the only way anyone will ever figure out what really went wrong will be to recover the pieces and do a physical analysis. If those future explorers discover there were multiple failure modes, I wouldn't be surprised.
No government will send explorers to find out. Instead, some Richard Branson-like people (i.e. rich nerds) will get together on their vacation to Mars and mount an expedition to the wreckage site and announce the results to the press.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
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. If something goes wrong on a lander, debugging should become far easier if you can still communicate with the broken system.
The scientific instruments could be distributed among them, each carrying roughly a third of the load. This would greatly reduce the size and weight of each lander, and this in turn would simplify the parachute system, the landing system, and many other parts.
Alternatively each lander could have the same weight, with a more varied range of instruments. The Beagle2 systeem is already impressively small and versatile.
Some instruments might be repeated on two landers or on all three, especially some very small and lightweight instruments.
If the landers are small and light enough, all three can travel on the same ship from Earth to Mars. In fact, I think on a single ship you could send several groups with three landers each.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Looking at some technical details (click "Technology"), I get the impression that Beagle2 might be able to crawl over the surface.
The instrument arm is strong enough to lift the instrument package. This strength might be enough to let it push down firmly on the ground, maybe 10 cm away, and then pull itself forward.
Maybe it couldn't pull along all the solar cell parts, maybe it would have to leave them behind, connected through an electric cable.
There's nothing in the description of Beagle2 that suggests that they have thought of this possibility.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Though the 'redundancy'-suggestion is quite good, the price is too high. Another suggestion might be some satellites in geostationary orbit, dedicated in (1)observing the life and times of Mars-rovers and (2) continually streaming everything back to Earth. Minimum of 4, 8 would be nice. Add some AI or expert-system to manage them and the whole project would not depend so much on the connection between Earth and Mars. They could hang around for quite a few years and after the write-off of the rovers they (the satellites) could continue with observation of the climate etc. Expensive as well but hey, I'd rather have an expensive system in safe orbit than on the less safe surface.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
No, we can not all agree on this. Dont presume that you can speak for everyone, especially on topics where you (probably) are not qualified to make such statements.
While I respect your right to have your opinion, I think maybe you are talking out of your ass when you try to pretend that you know why NASA succedded and the Brits failed.
In 2000, Reuters said this:
If you want to criticize a failure, that is fine (although I dont think you are qualified to), analysis of errors can help to ensure they dont happen again. But your blind 'america is best - britain sucks' criticism is neither helpful nor true.
Does your Darwin snipe to mean that you do not believe in the theory of evolution by natural selection? I wouldnt be surprised if you don't.
Beagle 2 was done by the UK educational establishment.
The ESA - European Space Agency - are supposed to be like NASA, in charge of all EU space activity.
The ESA, who were sidelined by Beagle 2, have been asked to produce the report into why Beagle 2 failed.
To my total lack of astonishment, the report argues that all EU space activity must take place under the auspicies of the ESA, and it was wrong to do otherwise.
It's as if Spaceship One failed, and NASA - who's very existance is essentially threatened by private space travel - was asked to produce the report on the failure.
This report is questionable purely due to the conflict of interest on the part of the ESA.
--
Toby
Quit trying to compete with the USA technology wise, because you will lose.
Are you kidding? We're still sending people into space with less computing power on board than TI-83's. Well, we were. Today we don't send anyone into space because our so-called "advanced technology" is old n' busted. EU's got the new hotness, and we got the old n' busted. I would like to see China and the EU do more in space, so we feel more compelled to one-up them and do even greater things in space than we have yet done. As an added side benefit to all, international space races have been and will continue to be of benefit to all humanity.
They probably were on the bad side of the odds. Mars is tough on probes. Even the US had two failures in its last five Mars mission.
I hope they try again. ESA Huygens was sucessful. And there are some lunar probes on the way.