Go Beagle

A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.


Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

(Christopher) wrote in message ...
A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.


Ditto that and Woof!

- Ed Kyle

In article ,
(Christopher) wrote:

A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.

You sure? I understand the replacement airbags were never tested, and
the first ones failed.

Initial reports are no signal on the first pass.

-Ben

Ben Hines wrote:
In article ,
(Christopher) wrote:


A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.


You sure? I understand the replacement airbags were never tested, and
the first ones failed.

Initial reports are no signal on the first pass.

-Ben
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Brian

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.

Now that Joddrell Bank hasn't received any signal from Beagle 2, we can
assume the probe has been lost. JB would have been able to pick up the
faintest signal from Mars yet there was nothing...

Next question is: what went wrong? A battery failure during its solo trip to
Mars? Software failure (very common these days, it seems) Early deployment
of the chute when it hit the atmosphere (I was wondering how how they'd
detect when Beagle 2 actually arrived into the atmosphere, I read somewhere
that it was done by way of a timer!), pyro circuitry that failed? Thing is,
most likely, we'll never know as there wasn't any telemetry from the point
of ejection. A thousand things could have gone wrong in those 5-6 days.

Europe finds out the hard way that landing a craft on Mars isn't all that
easy. I hope ESA will build a replacement craft just like they did with
Cluster.

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 11:40:03 +0100, "Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote:


"Christopher" wrote in message
...
A little over six and half hours to go. Good luck Beagle, you can do
it.

Now that Joddrell Bank hasn't received any signal from Beagle 2, we can
assume the probe has been lost. JB would have been able to pick up the
faintest signal from Mars yet there was nothing...

Next question is: what went wrong? A battery failure during its solo trip to
Mars? Software failure (very common these days, it seems) Early deployment
of the chute when it hit the atmosphere (I was wondering how how they'd
detect when Beagle 2 actually arrived into the atmosphere, I read somewhere
that it was done by way of a timer!), pyro circuitry that failed? Thing is,
most likely, we'll never know as there wasn't any telemetry from the point
of ejection. A thousand things could have gone wrong in those 5-6 days.

Europe finds out the hard way that landing a craft on Mars isn't all that
easy. I hope ESA will build a replacement craft just like they did with
Cluster.


Don't right little Beagle off just yet. According to todays news on
Ceefax we still have 14 more goes left, the next being tonight, before
the Mars Express orbiter tries to contact Beagle on Jan 4.


Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 11:40:03 +0100, "Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote:

Europe finds out the hard way that landing a craft on Mars isn't all that
easy. I hope ESA will build a replacement craft just like they did with
Cluster.

....Don't bet on it. The beancounters in Europe are a magnitude more
chicke**** than the ones in the US, and will take this as a sign that
Europe's "not ready" to go to space on their own. It's this exact
attitude that keeps getting the Old World stuck deep in their own ****
and us having to pull them out of it again.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
Dr. O dr.o@xxxxx wrote:
Next question is: what went wrong? A battery failure during its solo trip to
Mars? Software failure (very common these days, it seems) Early deployment
of the chute when it hit the atmosphere (I was wondering how how they'd
detect when Beagle 2 actually arrived into the atmosphere, I read somewhere
that it was done by way of a timer!), pyro circuitry that failed?

The way to bet, I would say, is an excessively hard landing damaging B2
too badly for it to unfold and/or communicate. The landing itself was
always one of the riskiest parts -- even had everything worked perfectly,
parachute plus airbags with no braking rockets was rather a gamble -- and
there are half a dozen ways it could have gone awry.

Europe finds out the hard way that landing a craft on Mars isn't all that
easy. I hope ESA will build a replacement craft just like they did with
Cluster.

Note that ESA didn't build Beagle 2, and hence isn't likely to build a
replacement... And since there is currently no Mars Express 2 in the
plans, it's hard to say what it could hitch a ride on.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Henry Spencer wrote:
Note that ESA didn't build Beagle 2, and hence isn't likely to build a
replacement... And since there is currently no Mars Express 2 in the
plans, it's hard to say what it could hitch a ride on.

Correct, but there are plans for the ExoMars mission in 2009 launch
window. Even that ESA did not build Beagle 2, it's pretty certain that
the people who are now working on the possible design specifications
of the ExoMars rover's lander, are evaluating Beagle's results. And
possibly the plans are affected by the results.

I keep my fingers crossed for Beagle 2. It's not over until it's over...


Matti Anttila

--
email:
www: http://antti.la/

Prototype of the MRoSA2 Mars rover:
http://antti.la/mrosa2/

Matti Anttila wrote:

Correct, but there are plans for the ExoMars mission in 2009 launch
window. Even that ESA did not build Beagle 2, it's pretty certain that
the people who are now working on the possible design specifications
of the ExoMars rover's lander, are evaluating Beagle's results. And
possibly the plans are affected by the results.

Frankly, given the lack of EDL telemetry, the lack of technical details
from Beagle 2's limited preflight testing, and the (in my opinion,
valid) concerns of some U.S. engineers regarding Beagle 2's heatshield
design, I would say that determining a failure mode(s) among several
possibilities is going to be nothing more than sheer speculation. That
is unless, of course, NASA's 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE
super high resolution camera (cm/pxl scale) is able to spot Beagle 2 or
its remnants on the surface.

At any rate, I fear, as was the case with MPL/DS2, that we may never
know what might have caused Beagle 2 to "fail," if indeed that is what
has happened.

--


Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii