beagle failure guesses?

I am holding out hope the mission will still succeed, but meanwhile, I'm trying
to think of the possible reasons for failure, and what if anything could have
been done to prevent or recover from them. Interested in your rankings of these
possibilities or alternate most likely failure modes.

Software/programming failure akin to MCO, landing outside predicted area or
munged Mars atmospheric entry and burnup.

Lander never inserted for entry in right position and skipped out of
atmosphere, returned and burned or /and landed somewhere completely different.

Leak in onboard systems leading to explosion during heating in Mars Entry
interface.

Malfunctioning deployment, pyros early, late, or none, on parachute system, or
chute fouled or burned.

Balloon bags failed and g-load/impact out of limits.

Antennae fouled by parts of balloon bags, or balloon bags not all deflated and
causing fouling of deployment.

Landed against a large boulder and was flipped inverted when the clamshells
hinged open, which otherwise is self-righting assuming you're on a flat spot to
start with.

En-route solar flare damage to electronics undetected, internal clock not
re-set, or sequencer damaged.

Stuck in a rift, arroyo, crevice or chasm, only a 2-3 degree radio window
straight up in one direction, or unable to deploy at all in the crevice.

God hates Blur;-)

Other possibilities?

My Votes:

1)Mars Planetary Defense System, still there still working after all these years ;-)

2)Impacted Hard/broke due to failure or mis-charactoization of:
Atmosphere, Chute, Airbags, S/W that triggers all of the above.

3)Terrain issues, crevice, upside down, boulder etc....


4)Something stupid, Forgot to remove the packing tape holding the lid shut etc....



It is my understanding that all of the current mars misstions are using parachute data
extrapolated from some very limited highspeed, high altitude parachute data developed
over 25 years ago for the first mars landing missions.

When you are using 25 year old data, it is very easy to loose the unwritten assumptions
that were part of the data 25 years ago.

The short answer:
Landing on Mars is hard to do.








On 27 Dec 2003 22:22:33 GMT, (MSu1049321) wrote:

I am holding out hope the mission will still succeed, but meanwhile, I'm trying
to think of the possible reasons for failure, and what if anything could have
been done to prevent or recover from them. Interested in your rankings of these
possibilities or alternate most likely failure modes.

Software/programming failure akin to MCO, landing outside predicted area or
munged Mars atmospheric entry and burnup.

Lander never inserted for entry in right position and skipped out of
atmosphere, returned and burned or /and landed somewhere completely different.

Leak in onboard systems leading to explosion during heating in Mars Entry
interface.

Malfunctioning deployment, pyros early, late, or none, on parachute system, or
chute fouled or burned.

Balloon bags failed and g-load/impact out of limits.

Antennae fouled by parts of balloon bags, or balloon bags not all deflated and
causing fouling of deployment.

Landed against a large boulder and was flipped inverted when the clamshells
hinged open, which otherwise is self-righting assuming you're on a flat spot to
start with.

En-route solar flare damage to electronics undetected, internal clock not
re-set, or sequencer damaged.

Stuck in a rift, arroyo, crevice or chasm, only a 2-3 degree radio window
straight up in one direction, or unable to deploy at all in the crevice.

God hates Blur;-)

Other possibilities?

MSu1049321 wrote:
I am holding out hope the mission will still succeed, but meanwhile, I'm trying
to think of the possible reasons for failure, and what if anything could have
been done to prevent or recover from them. Interested in your rankings of these
possibilities or alternate most likely failure modes.

Martian life found it.

In article ,
MSu1049321 wrote:
Software/programming failure akin to MCO, landing outside predicted area or
munged Mars atmospheric entry and burnup.
Lander never inserted for entry in right position and skipped out of
atmosphere, returned and burned or /and landed somewhere completely different.

Note that Beagle 2 had no independent maneuvering capability. It was
dropped off on its entry trajectory by Mars Express, which is not having
any obvious navigation problems.

There are any number of things it could have been, but to my mind the
likeliest by far is airbag problems -- poor deployment, leaks, punctured
by rocks, worked fine but just didn't cushion the impact enough, etc. --
leading to a crash.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

wrote in message
...
My Votes:
4)Something stupid, Forgot to remove the packing tape holding the lid shut
etc....

This one may not be as stupid as it sounds. I remember a Beagle animation
where, upon landing, some sort of metal belt was removed by pyrotechnics. If
the thing can't deploy the solar 'petals' pretty quickly, the batteries will
wear out within a couple of hours.

A battery failure soon after ejection could be another possible culprit,
resulting in a 'dead' lander entering the Martian atmosphere and crashing
into the ground. Did they test the batteries (by switching off Mars Express'
power supply to Beagle) before ejecting the thing?