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."

Lessons learned report

[Realistic_Dragon]

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

Re:Groups of three

[Anonymous Coward]

3 landers = 3 times the parachutes, external equipment, communications systems. With that kind of weigh allowance, we could do a lot more. Beagle 2 was static - with 3 times the weight allowance, we could have a rover.

Not everything will run perfectly - NASA dropped a fragile disc into the desert at 500m/s last year if you remember. But we can't afford to build double redundancy into already expensive spacecraft.

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!

Locomotion

[QuickFox]

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.

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:Spaceward Ho

[leecn]

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

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.

Now think for a moment about scientist in the US, those beleagured, scrappy NASA workers who have to struggle for grant money... Yet it was their Mars effort that succeeded

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:

Still reeling from the spectacular failures of two Mars missions last year, NASA said Thursday it had learned from its mistakes and would not repeat them in an ambitious new mission for 2003...

an 18-member committee headed by former NASA official Thomas Young criticized NASA's "faster, cheaper, better" philosophy, saying it had caused programs to be underfunded by about 30 percent and encouraged staffers to cut corners in vital areas.

Edward Weiler, associate administrator in NASA's Office of Space Science, said staffers had been afraid to report problems because they knew of budget and staffing restraints and did not want to add to the burden

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.

Blackwash

[Toby The Economist]

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

Re:bureaucracy in, garbage out

[Tablizer]

um, the real reason the beagle 2 failed is very simple: they told it to land in a crater.

Unless you have pin-point landing technology, you cannot really avoid operating near the vacinity of craters on Mars, because they are almost everywhere. But compared to all the other possible risks, landing on the wall of a large crater is fairly remote, probably something like 1/200.

Viking 1 was selected to land in one of the most crater-free parts of Mars. Images revealed a giant boulder about 20 feet from the lander. If it had landed on that boulder, it would have been toast. A large pointy rock can pop airbags also.