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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.
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.
Colin Pillinger dies after brain haemorrhage http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Funny how you think metric is somehow non-standard.