Slashdot Mirror
Lost Beagle2 Probe Found 'Intact' On Mars
New submitter Stolga sends this report from the BBC:
The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact. High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece. The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003, using parachutes and airbags — but no radio contact was ever made with the probe. Many scientists assumed it had been destroyed in a high-velocity impact.
The new pictures, acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, give the lie to that notion, and hint at what really happened to the European mission. Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University.
The new pictures, acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, give the lie to that notion, and hint at what really happened to the European mission. Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University.
Dammit! First it's spy satellites watching my every movement on earth, and now you can't even have privacy ON MARS!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Despite the fact that I know that the probe's namesake was the HMS Beagle, of Darwin fame, the news that a lost beagle has been found on mars still conjures up an enormously sad image of a small dog, curled up tightly; but still frozen solid, in the vast emptiness of the martian landscape.
It's not like it was the only probe to use parachutes. Besides, it also used airbags. I'm inclined to think that the engineers knew what they were doing.
Really? Well shit, good thing you figured it out.
Better tell all those PHDs and other people who do that for a living before they blindly chuck any more multi-billion dollar probes at Mars without any effective means of slowing down.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
"Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels,"
Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw? Placement of the antenna that did not depend on success of unfurling is a lesson learned.
Congratulations on your near success.
Seriously - you did a lot better than some other much better funded probes did.
Colin Pillinger dies after brain haemorrhage http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
Quick someone send it the command to roll over!!
This might be a good mission for the old wheeled vehicle with an arm. Go to this location, then attempt to unfurl the panels.
Designing the antenna to be "hidden" by the 5 "leaves" is absurd. This provides more evidence supporting ground-based probes shoud be using nuclear power sources. Spirit, Opportunity, Philae... when will we drop the nonsensical arguments about sending nuclear power sources to space?
There's a white dot directly above the Beagle, I wonder if that's a snapped-off solar panel petal.
It's still an atmosphere there - at the speeds that the payload is arriving parachutes will work fine to slow it down quite a bit. But for the final phase airbags and other means like braking rockets still are needed.
The initial hit on the atmosphere is a heat shield, but when that no longer is needed then you continue the slowdown with parachutes. Using rockets for the full deceleration is probably heavier than the parachutes otherwise they would have used them.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Well don't just tell us, do something about it!
http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ca...
Mostly random stuff.
Now that we know where it is, and a rough idea on what's wrong, I wonder if we can send something down to get Beagle operational. I know it would most likely be more efficient to send out a new probe witht he same abilities (like we have), but I like the idea of fixing something on Mars.
The moon has ~10^-7 pascals of pressure, and Mars has ~.6 kilopascals of pressure. I leave computing the order of magnitude of difference to the reader.
If only the team leading this groundbreaking, ultra-low-budget probe to Mars had hired all you absolute experts.
Supplementing my post with this: http://www.astrobio.net/news-b...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
And you would be incorrect.
The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator is testing next-generation parachutes for landing things on Mars. They launch the test platform high up into Earth's atmosphere, where the air pressure and other conditions are most like Mars, then they test how the various new parachute and other drag tech works to slow it down again. Disclosure: My wife is one of the engineers that worked on the platform itself.
The parachute is not designed to be the final landing device, but if you don't use a parachute or other drag device as you approach when there is measurable atmosphere you'll burn up or crash hard. The atmosphere doesn't have to be very thick to still have friction.
Given what they said about Beagle's failure to deploy, I wonder if it broke during the airbag bounce process and the panel jammed.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Little probe, lonely on mars, seeks companionship
Or maybe just someone to listen
Please respond
Maibox empty for 11 years now
Have you forgotten me?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So given that we know where to find it and could use the orbiter to send a strong, tightly-confined signal that its (poorly placed, apparently) antenna might have some small chance of detecting - Any possibility that we could revive it at this point, send it some sort of "reboot and try again" signal?
Nonsense! This is Slashdot. Here every guy who got better than a C in their high school physics course thinks they know better than engineers with real world experience.
Maybe NASA can go bump it with a rover a couple of times......you never know....always works on my B&W TV!
just sayin
"Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels,"
Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw? Placement of the antenna that did not depend on success of unfurling is a lesson learned.
I'm amazed that you actually had to ask that question . . . and even more amazed that you were modded "Insightful" for it.
Some of us got a D, you know-nothing moron!
You just need really big parachutes.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Had you RTFA, you would know it appears the landing was entirely successful. The darned solar petals, well, RTFA.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Knowing what failed is valuable. Now instead of engineers looking at rockets and/or parachutes, they can concentrate on the panel deployment system. Maybe they overlooked something and it was more easily fouled by dust than they thought.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"I guess the circuits controlling communications got screwed up, so it was assumed to be lost."
I know this is Slashdot and people is not expected to RTFA but you... guess!!!???
From the header:
"Beagle's design incorporated a series of deployable "petals," on which were mounted its solar panels. From the images, it seems that this system did not unfurl fully. "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University."
Never under-estimate the ability of a random poster to point out, after 2 minutes thought, things that so-called experts have jointly devoted hundreds of years of studying to, yet completely over-looked. Like they were total morons.
It's what makes internet forums the font of all human progress, and not ill-informed stupidity.
6... the answer is 6
Had you RTFA, you would know it appears the landing was entirely successful. The darned solar petals, well, RTFA.
If the landing was entirely successful, what prevented the solar panels from deploying? We don't know yet. Could have been a hard landing. That's not successful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would guess that the solar panels are supposed to charge the batteries. Batteries can fail pretty easily at very low temperatures, and a lot of spacecraft need energy to keep warm in addition to running the electronics. In all likelihood it has been without sufficient power long enough for the onboard "perishables" like batteries to be useless.
The ones they use are for supersonic use.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
From the article:
The failure cause is pure speculation
You said
The article stated that they did have some idea why that design failed.
What in the article supports your assertion? They gave a guess after they said it was only a guess. Saying they have "an idea" implies there is some proof to back up the "idea" which they do not have yet.
There is more than enough here to repeatedly test landing and deployment.
Are you saying they did not do that before the original launch? I'm pretty sure they had rigorous testing before, guessing at the failure mode and then doing testing to see if your new design works to prevent your guessed failure mode is simply foolhardy.
That introduces its own drawbacks and failure modes.
Almost none of which leave you without any communications whatsoever if it makes it down to the surface in one piece as the Beagle MAY have. It eliminates a whole component of the system (solar power) and a system with one whole less aspect to worry about is inherently more robust.
It also SOLVES a whole class of problems dealing with cold.
And the reasons why they didn't choose that other system (such as not having access to plutonium 238) still apply.
Perhaps then THAT is the problem to work at rather than guessing why the petals failed and just HOPING that the next mission fares better if they use the same design?
All that said I hope ExoMars does well, but I just don't think it's right to claim that it's inherantly better to use a design that we know failed rather than going forward with elements we have seen work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like the fact that the astronomers in Europe and the U.S might use different measuring systems? Gosh, I must be a schmuck to point out that those scientists with Ph.D.s might want to double check that when sending up a probe or a satellite, because hey, they're pretty smart and I'm an idiot, right?
Anyone who ever owned a British car or motorcycle won't be surprised at this !
That's what you get for thinking outside the box.
Funny how you think metric is somehow non-standard.
This one cost £50M and seeing as it landed intact, within 5km of the centre of its target landing area they obviously did a pretty good job getting it the surface. If they'd spent a bit MORE money/time they might have engineered the probe more reliably so it actually opened properly...
Well, at least it seems the Entry/Descent/Landing engineers knew what they were doing. The "petal" system engineers, not quite so much.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Maybe these guys failed to properly convert stone to kilograms.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This is related to space, so I'm posting it: You can see a video of the crash of the Faclon here. Plus a couple of funny tweets by Elon Musk, such as when he calls the crash a "RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly)" - heh.
But our petals were a thing of true beauty!
At least we don't lose expensive projects because we cant even convert to metric properly.
USA home of the half witted fuckwit.
That is unless the petals failed to deploy because of a rough landing and something broke.
I'm inclined to think the parachute was more or less to orient the craft in a certain position so the other portions of the landing would work correctly. But then again, at the speeds it would have been traveling, slowing it a bit might have been a purpose too.
Remote hacking/repair mission on its way i think... What else would one use mars rover nearing its retire season... ;)
What is the chance of a future mission giving it a little nudge and salvaging the probe?
OMG facts!
Isn't it normal for Slashdot users to keep their D outside the box?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
6... the answer is 6
Only if kilopascals and pascals were the same unit.
... can be recovered.
It's not dead. It's just pining for the fjords...
one day when we get more resolution we will see that there is a red tag on one of the still stowed position petals that reads "removed before flight"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Gosh, I must be a schmuck to point out that those scientists with Ph.D.s might want to double check that
That's about the size of it.
they're pretty smart and I'm an idiot, right?
You're on a roll here buddy!
Two of the solar panels did unfurl and theoretically are producing power. Perhaps not enough to run all the instruments, but it's something and it's possible could be keeping the batteries charged.
Most of these probes, sensing loss of communication or other problem, go into a 'fault mode' where the bare minimum is kept going until instructions are received. The probe itself might be functional and alive, just with low power and unable to communicate with it's primary array.
I wonder if there is another way to communicate now that we know what's going on? Remember Gallileo had a problem unfurling it's primary antenna and was able to communicate, although much more slowly, through a secondary, low-power antenna.
If the thing hit softly enough to not be turned into a heap of scrap, and the solar petals didn't deploy because of a "hard landing" then that's a design flaw in the petal deployment system, not in the landing system.
You are aware you're talking about a EUROPEAN probe, right? Those are the same retards that tried to harpoon a comet, missed, then had their lead scientist break down in tears in front of the world for being heckled by feminists for a shirt. They aren't even Human-level competence, let alone scientist-level competence.
Have you looked at the photos? They didn't make any such determination from those photo's. They know all the systems deployed properly because they can see them as they should have landed, they have no idea why the petals didn't unfold and in fact that's their only explanation for why it didn't contact as they don't actually have an image of it with enough detail to know it wasn't damaged.
But if you think they can determine that from the 3 or so pixels that make up the lander you obviously believe they have image technology like in the blade runner movie where they can see details in a photo that aren't there. What they know is that the parachute and airbags deployed and apparently worked but there is no way to determine if there was damage to the lander during the bounce process. They can only guess that the petals didn't deploy properly, not why.
Lucas, Lord of Darkness :D
Are there any rovers in the area? If so, someone might want to be nice and help the poor lander out.
That joke required a little too much setup.