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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."
Neither did Capt'n Hector... fp!
has landed.
Teaches them for using crappy gear
And no, I couldn't give a shit what my karma is.
I read land of fucking instead of lack of funding, please try less confusing verbalizations :)
- ph0
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."
It's nice, reminds me of the "where am I" from Snow Crash.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
1) Do not do calculations requiring a high degree of accuracy on a Pentium.
Beep beep.
But could the failure of the Beagle 2 have been due to it's cratering in the Martian dirt?
For playing with my shiny new green laser pointer and shooting down beagle 2 by mistaking it for an aircraft.
Excellent- all eager /.ers click to view the report. At first, everything goes according to plan. After a while, the whole report disappears from view, with the host citing communication difficulies. A few days later, the report is written off as lost...
Beagle 2 was actually a SAS probe, designed to hunt down and disrupt the NASA probes.
Evidence:
1 developed 'bugs' in its software, causing it to go into safe mode (Beagle 2 whacked it on the head with a mallet)
the other one developed wheel trouble (Beagle 2 left some chewing gum on the wheel)
The shape of Beagle 2 has been identified in the heatshield wreckage of Opportunitys location. We believe Beagle 2 is now preparing to possibly stalk Opportunity and gain more experience for its next level up in MarsRPG.
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....
Technical details aside, I think we can all agree that the root cause of the Beagle 2's failure can be found in the society and culture from which it originates.
Just think for a moment of the scientific community in Britain, cushily funded by the government and looked upon in their society as respected intellectuals. It's no wonder the Beagle team looked at the mars mission as a routine scientific chore no different from calibrating a microscope or analyzing the content of a meteor.
Now think for a moment about scientist in the US, those beleagured, scrappy NASA workers who have to struggle for grant money and who are often looked upon by the general public as doddering Jerry Lewis types who go around incinerating unsuspecting astronauts. Yet it was their Mars effort that succeeded.
Coincidence? I think not. It is precisely the adverserial environment that the NASA scientists daily toil in that gave them the resilience and adaptability to triumph (think also about the US tradition of steadfast frontiersmen and pioneers vs. British tradition of landed gentry and simple peasant folk). Ironically, you could say it is a Darwinian process.
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.
"Rule #1: Don't Have the British build the electronic parts"
um, the real reason the beagle 2 failed is very simple: they told it to land in a crater. see my comment on the previous mention of this subject on slashdot for four urls to articles supporting this.
The article can be read here
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.
Thats about the typical reason for any failed project.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Here is the printfu link... 4.84 dollars for the printed version
t p://www.bnsc.gov.uk/assets/channels/resources/pres s/report.pdf&pppemail=j2eegeek76@yahoo.com
http://www.printfu.org/?mcAction=pdfurl&pdfurl=ht
Maybe that's becuase often that's the cause of a faileur? For example, I know that if I fail to arrive somehwere on time, typically it's becuase I didn't leave soon enough.
Go eat some blood pudding you pastey faced limey bastard,
The Mad Yank
"I would also question the utility of the US landers."
p lo rationrovers.html
r sgloba lsurveyor.htmlc urrent/2001marso dyssey.html
Yes. They haven't done anything useful. We should use the Beagle as a perfect example of what to do...
"why not try sending something useful next time like a spectrometer or some other sampling tool?"
Maybe if you get off your mental duff and just look:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/current/marsex
http://athena.cornell.edu/
You might find that it does these things. Don't try to tear down the widely successful ROVER missions to mars by being ignornant of facts.
Also, to help you, there are several missions to Mars from NASA that are doing so much research right now:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/index.cfm
is a list....
Here's just a few Mars specific probes going on right now:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/current/ma
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/
And while NASA isn't doing as great a job as it could, it is doing *something*.
Now go back to your crawl space before I get medieval on your *ss.
Well, I wouldn't leave administration out either.
The report cites repeated reviews finding highlighting those funding and design issues, yet no action was ever taken on most of it.
Add to that a schedule with effectively zero margin for error, no central organization to manage the disparate groups (or sort out the fights when Martin Baker and Astrium couldn't work things out), and inadequate documentation, and you have a guaranteed disaster.
You can't build a complicated system without command, control and communication. Bad design is the effect, not the cause.
Lack of guaranteed funding during the early phases of development
Lack of an adequate managamenent organisation with the relevant experience
Lack of available margins to manage and mitigate risks Let's hope, that Airbus & Co. doesn't suffer from similar problems.
I have a real issue with people claiming the lack of funding was a root cause of failure.
Projects fail for inadequate project management, improper planning, a flaw in the design or execution. Spending more money and having more resources makes identifying and correcting these things _easier_ but is not a failure condition for the project.
Look at the amazing strides people have made with no 'funding' save their own ingenuity and drive. Certainly the British Space Program could have, with the very same financial resources allocated differently, either identified during the design phase that they did not have enough resources to move forward or else designed a successful misssion.
It's all about the Product Development Life Cycle (Define->Design->Develop->Deploy) and the interrelation of Time-Scope-Resources that allows a project to define two of the three, but the third one is defined by the other two. (If I need scope S completed in time T then I cannot also define budget B)
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
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
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
Did anyone else read this as the "it's not our fault!! They didn't give us enough money and were mean to us!" defense?
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
European socialism.
Power to the people, but at what cost? Both of these projects have been the victim of inadequate funding because of socialist government policies. It doomed Beagle 2 and it almost made Huygens a complete failure.
Bring on the flames if don't like the comment, or simply take to the streets and strike.
AC
1) The team conducting this study strongly recommends that the members of this team receive substantially more funding in the future.
caused by bad management and (strangely enough) lack of established funding, worsened the situation.
These inquiries could save a lot of money by creating boiler-plate inquiries that end up finding the same result anyhow:
Dear Inquiry Team Members,
After _____ months of study, we have concluded that the loss of ________________ was the result of poor management and lack of sufficient funding.
Sincerely,
Dr. ________________, Chief Investigator
Table-ized A.I.
chartnel house. The Parts of you are My efforts were
Support the project with this attractive commemerative wallpaper!h eroes-of-mars/
http://www.alittlepoison.com/archives/2004/01/22/
No testing of the EDLS due to a fixed price variable scope contract with Astrium seem to have left us in the situation where we are not sure if the landing system would ever have worked. For a few million quid we could perform belated testing of the design which may help future missions and exonerate the EDLS design team from blame.
How many missions must end up succeeding in-spite of just as many shortcomings? Knew the ESA would use this as an excuse to grab future dev work from the Brits.
Lessons left out:
Leave the exploration of space to those qualified and experienced - the United States of America.
Quit trying to compete with the USA technology wise, because you will lose.
With the wealth of scientific data that the MER project has returned over the last year, could the Beagle 2 have given us any more? I understand the need to find out what went wrong for engineering reasons, but scientifically, were we really set back that much?
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.
I propose a cultural problem.
I would like a Brit to reflect here on why nearly all of their major high profile public projects are doomed to spectacular failure.
I get the feeling that the once great empire building country seems to have exported and lost it's go-getters and is stuck with second rate middle management who are hell bent on staying where they are, interfering with their own agendas and covering their butts later.
Curiously, there was something similar idea the Europeans had called NETLANDER, which would have landed a network of 4 geophysical stations on the surface of mars. Unfortunately, the project was cancelled in 2003.
d er/
Links:
http://smsc.cnes.fr/NETLANDER/
http://ganymede.ipgp.jussieu.fr/GB/projets/netlan
We Brits are very good at our sums. If we can fund an unsuccessful mission for £30 million - when a successful one costs ten times that amount - then we have saved £270 million.
We're smarter still: it gives us the precedent of an unsuccessful mission to point to. Then we can reject future missions on the grounds that all this space nonsense is too risky and likely to fail. See? Now we don't have to spend anything at all!
We did think of post-ejection telemetry, but there was insufficient mass budget to add electronics to the back face in order to transmit it, and it used too much power for the small battery, also mass constrained, and Mars-Express wasn't overhead during the descent and entry phase (it was parking). The simple "ping" system on the JPL MERs worked well. We should copy that next time.