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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.
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.
Why? Without solar panels, it would quickly run out of power, so you'd get barely anything done even if the antenna did deploy. Having the antenna underneath the panels probably helped protect it during atmospheric entry and landing as well.
This provides more evidence supporting ground-based probes shoud be using nuclear power sources.
Nuclear power sources will need to be unfurled as well. They have to be some distance away from the more delicate electronics and sensors (especially anything trying to detect the sort of particles that the power source is generating!).
Spirit, Opportunity, Philae... when will we drop the nonsensical arguments about sending nuclear power sources to space?
How about the sensible arguments for not sending nuclear power sources? Like not having access to Plutonium 238? Solar power works as has been demonstrated multiple times on the surface of Mars with a fair number of successful projects.
To me that doesn't make any sense, since they have no idea why that design failed. They don't even know for sure it failed, perhaps the thing did hit way to hard on impact and these are the only pieces left that are together.
The article stated that they did have some idea why that design failed. They have images of the probe. In turn, this evidence indicates that the probe landed mostly intact with partial deployment of the solar panels.
Even if the craft was still whole and it was simply the petals failing to unfold, you don't know why - Dust? Cold? You'd have to guess and put in a fix based on that guess, but you wouldn't be sure.
Knowledge is imperfect. So what? There is more than enough here to repeatedly test landing and deployment. Even if the failure can't be exactly duplicated, they probably can figure out what systems were probably behind the failure.
Way better as others are saying to switch to a design (nuclear battery) without something that failed in some unknown way existing at all.
That introduces its own drawbacks and failure modes. And the reasons why they didn't choose that other system (such as not having access to plutonium 238) still apply.