Beagle 2 Probe Spotted on Mars

evilduckie writes "According to this BBC article photos taken by the Mars Global Surveyor show the European Beagle 2 probe which was lost after it apparently crash-landed on Mars."

Comments

Re:Uhhh

[NeoThermic]

The quote there is a bit short on words.

Basically the probe was designed to impact on the surface, after being slowed by the parachutes. The underside of the probe was capable and designed to impact hard. However, what appears to have happend is that the impact was side on, hitting where the probe wasn't designed to be hit, and doing fatial damage.

NeoThermic

Beagle 2 was part of the Mars Express mission

[YA_Python_dev]

The Beagle 2 lander was part of the very successful European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express mission.

Mars Express contains 7 different scientific instruments and, amongs other things, it has already:

• discovered aurorae on Mars;

• transmitted back gigabytes of beautiful images with a resolution of up to 2 meters/pixel;

• discovered a huge subsurface water ice lake, with a thickness of 1.8 km and an extension of hundreds of kms;

• collaborated with NASA, receiving data from the Mars rovers and transmitting it back to Earth (yes: they use the same communication protocol!).