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Posted on 01/06/2004 10:30:13 AM PST by blam
Mothership is last chance for Beagle 2
13:17 06 January 04
NewScientist.com news service
Europe's Mars Express spacecraft is gearing up for a last-ditch attempt to make contact with the missing Beagle 2 lander.
Beagle 2 has been completely silent since it entered the Martian atmosphere on Christmas Day. Several attempts by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and the 76-metre Jodrell Bank radio dish in the UK have failed to pick up any signals from the British lander.
Scientists say their best hope is that Mars Express, Beagle 2's mothership, will pick up transmissions from the lander when it flies over the landing site on Wednesday at around 1215 GMT. They will announce the result at around 1500 GMT.
If Mars Express does not hear signals, the mission is almost certainly dead. However, the Beagle 2 team is adamant that they will not give up until mid-February, when Mars Express will have had several chances to make contact.
Solar panels
Beagle 2 might have crash-landed on the Martian surface and shattered into pieces. Or the solar panels that charge its battery may have failed to unfold following the landing. Another remote possibility is that it fell into a kilometre-wide crater in the centre of its target area.
Alternatively, a software glitch may have confused the lander's onboard clock, which tells Beagle 2 when to transmit signals to Mars Odyssey or Mars Express.
Mission manager Mark Sims says he wishes Beagle 2 had been programmed to transmit signals more continuously following touchdown, a mode which was supposed to begin after about 10 days without contact. "With hindsight, which is always beautiful 20-20 vision, we all might have paid a bit more attention to failure modes earlier on," he says.
Black box
Experts at Leicester University have ruled out some of the possible reasons for Beagle 2's silence, for instance that bad weather disrupted the lander's descent and landing, or that its communications antenna is at the wrong angle.
But they admit they might never know what happened. "That's the worst thing - Beagle could be sat quite happily working on the surface of Mars, but for some reason we don't understand, it's not talking to us," Sims told New Scientist.
Other experts suspect the worst. "My bet is that during the landing phase, one of the steps did not go as planned," says Max Meerman, an engineer with UK company Surrey Satellites, currently on sabbatical at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The lander could have burned up in the Martian atmosphere. Or the parachutes and airbags designed to give Beagle 2 a soft landing could have failed.
Sims says some kind of black-box recorder that transmitted information about the lander's fate would have been ideal, but weight and cost constraints prevented this.
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Closing In On The Red Planet : Mars Express Orbit Lowered, Search Continues For Beagle 2 Lander
January 4, 2003 -- Today at 14:13 CET, ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft successfully executed an essential planned manoeuvre to reduce its orbit around the Red Planet. A five minute burn of its main engine brought Mars Express from an orbit apocentre (highest point) of 190 000 km to 40 000 km with a pericentre (lowest point) of about 250 km. Mars Express will reach its final operational orbit of about 11 000 km apocentre and 300 km pericentre towards the end of the month after two more scheduled orbit adjustments (main engine burns) on the nights of 6 to 7 and 10 to 11 January.
Today’s key move enables ESA to pursue its Mars mission as planned. First, scheduled scientific observations can begin mid-January and, secondly, the search for the Beagle 2 landing module will become much more accurate.
Michael McKay, Mars Express Flight Operations Director in Darmstadt, Germany, explains: “From the second half of January 2004 onwards, the orbiter's instruments will be prepared to scan the atmosphere, the surface and parts of the subsurface structure of Mars with unprecedented precision. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), for example, will take high-precision pictures of the planet and will begin a comprehensive 3D cartography of Mars. The MARSIS radar will be able to scan as far as four kilometres below the surface, looking for underground water or ice. Also, several spectrometers will try to unveil the mysteries of Martian mineralogy and the atmosphere, as well as influences from the solar wind or seasonal changes.”
Furthermore, on 7 January 2004 at 13:15 CET, the lowest point (pericentre) of the Mars Express flight path will be as close as 315 km to the landing area of the still silent Beagle 2. The American orbiter Mars Odyssey and several radio-telescopes on Earth have been unable to obtain a signal since Christmas, but chances will rise with the approach of the 'mothership' to its 'baby' Beagle 2. Mars Express and Beagle 2 are the only end-to-end tested systems, giving ESA more confidence of establishing a contact with the lander. Today, 4 January, ESA specialists are meeting with Beagle 2 staff at ESA’s Operations Centre in Darmstadt to define a robust strategy for modes of interaction between the ESA orbiter and the lander. Mars Express has Ultra High Frequency (UHF) interfaces, ready to communicate with Beagle 2. In this context, Mars Express Project Manager Dr Rudolf Schmidt and his ESA colleagues are very much looking forward to 7 January 2004, 13:15 CET: “At this precise time, our Mars Express orbiter is in both an ideal flight path and an ideal communication configuration, right on top of the Beagle 2 landing area, at about 86 degrees. In this situation, we should be able to discern the slightest beep on the Martian surface.”
Today’s manoeuvre was another step to the European exploration of Mars, ensuring both orbiter operations as planned and a precise search of the Beagle 2 lander. ESA is looking forward to an exciting Mars exploration in the next months. The latest news will be posted, as always, at: at http://mars.esa.int
Well....If you launch one, send it over to the space immediately...it's leaking.
Their landing method wasnt too different from NASAs method... They dont have retro-rockets that slow the lander to 0 just before the parachute releases like the Spirit had....probably hit like a pallet of bricks.
That's my suspicion too.
If he's right, I hate it when that happens.
A step not going as planned, that is. Not the bet.
UK Engineers Drool!!!
Sorry blokes, just had to get me bloody jabs in while I could. ;)
I'll bet the parachute tore or something, poor thing went GADUNK.
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