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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.
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.
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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.
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