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Lost Beagle2 Probe Found 'Intact' On Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the so-close-and-yet-so-far dept.

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.

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. design flaw with placement of antenna by us7892 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    1. Re:design flaw with placement of antenna by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      What will the point of that lesson be, if they don't build more space probes based on that design? And suppose they already knew ahead of time that this was a design flaw? Then the best you can say is that this accident confirmed that the design flaw was indeed a design flaw.

      My point behind this observation is that there is an even more important lesson present here which continues to be ignored. There are considerable economies of scale to making multiple copies of a probe design. And here is one of those economies, you can actually take a "lesson learned" and use it to improve future implementation of the space probe design.

      If they were to now reuse the Beagle 2 design, they would know to study and fix the solar cell unfurling mechanism in order to prevent a now proven failure mode. They would also know that the landing mechanisms mostly work (though they might have contributed in some way to the final failure mode).

    2. Re:design flaw with placement of antenna by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not really. Without the solar panels it would have had no power. The solar panels are needed to have ongoing communication with it.

      Without power it's dead anyway.

      --
      Just saying it like it are.
  2. Fixed? by fltsimbuff · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re: parachutes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Funny how you think metric is somehow non-standard.