Free Republic

Britain's Beagle 2 lander has finally been spotted, 12 years after it went missing while trying to land on the surface of Mars History books will need to be rewritten after scientists announced today that Beagle 2 has been finally been found on Mars, 12 years after it vanished without trace. The beleaguered spacecraft, which has become a byword for mission failure, was spotted by scientists operating the HiRise camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It was discovered just 5km from its original touchdown site in the Isidis Planitia basin. And it appears that just one faulty motor was...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Space Agency said Monday they had learned from the failure of the Beagle 2 mission to seek out life on Mars, but kept a report on the high-profile flop tightly under wrap. The Beagle 2, named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed in when he formulated his theory of evolution, was built by British scientists for about $89.46 million and hitched a flight to Mars aboard the European Space Agency's orbiter Mars Express. Beagle was due to crash into Mars in a bouncing ball of airbags and begin looking for signs of life...

Beagle Team Postpones Search By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News Scientists have postponed a search due to have started tomorrow for the lost Beagle 2 probe. Instead they will try to communicate with the craft over the coming weekend. Controllers stopped trying to raise the British Mars lander on January 12. By maintaining radio silence, it was hoped Beagle 2 would be forced into an emergency communication mode that ensured its transmitter was kept on for most of the Martian day. This would give its mother ship, the Mars Express orbiter, the best chance of making contact. The...

A shift in planetary alignment has given the Mars Express mission crew a respite from their increasingly gloomy holiday task -- listening for a signal from their Beagle 2, which reached the Martian surface on Christmas Day and has been silent ever since. The lander may or may not be lost, but the odds are not good. Putting a probe on or even near the red planet is an immensely difficult undertaking. Only three spacecraft, all American, have ever reached the surface in good enough shape and circumstances to do their jobs (although one Soviet lander managed to signal for...

Scientists are clinging to hope that Europe's first probe to land on Mars will speak up and be heard, though no signal from Beagle 2 has been received since it touched down on the red planet Christmas Day. The British-built probe was jettisoned from its mother ship, Mars Express, on December 19. Upon landing on the red planet December 25, Beagle 2 was to relay a signal of its success via NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft. However, repeated attempts to hear the Beagle 2's call with Mars Odyssey and an array of powerful radio telescopes on Earth have failed, including...

SOMEHOW, "The Beagle has landed' just doesn't have the same ring as a certain, similar phrase coined in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and company first landed on the moon. But the Mars lander dubbed the Beagle 2 was named by British scientists and engineers, who have a rather drier, less grand approach to space-exploration nomenclature than their American cousins. And the craft is named after English explorer and naturalist Charles Darwin's vessel, so there is a fine historical precedent at work. As of Friday, there still had been no word or rather, no nine-tone song written by the Brit-rock group...

For up to date info, go to: www.space.com. Keeping my fingers crossed.....

    Mars Express Positioned for Beagle 2 DeploymentBy Peter de SeldingSpace News Staff Writerposted: 10:20 am ET16 December 2003  PARIS-- Ground controllers of Europe's Mars Express satellite on Dec. 16 successfully completed a precision-pointing maneuver to prepare the satellite for a planned Dec. 19 ejection of its small Beagle-2 lander, the mission's flight director said.Michael McKay, flight operations director at the European Space Agency's Esoc space operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, said Mars Express was rotated and its engines briefly fired to increase the satellite's speed as it approaches Mars as part of the maneuver.    Images A breakdown of...

Inside Mission Control (UK), preparing for Christmas Day landing on MarsEye witness: Beagle 2. Britain's National Space Centre may be based on an industrial estate in Leicester, but it has its sights set firmly on Mars By Severin Carrell 14 December 2003 An industrial estate in Leicester is an unlikely home for Britain's first ever mission into space, let alone the base for a team of scientists who could be the first people to find life on Mars. But in a small complex of buildings next to the council vehicle depot, the British National Space Centre, as it is grandly...

Mars 3 Lander transmitted for less than 15 seconds - then disappeared Images captured by Nasa orbiter from 2007 believed to show parachute and heatshield Next step is to research the 3-dimensional aspects of the finds to determine absolute proof It transmitted data back to earth for just 14.5 second before everything 'went dark.' But now incredible pictures from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [MRO] have revealed the site and possible remains of the Soviet Mars 3 Lander that arrived, and then seemingly disappeared, on the Red Planet in 1971. The MRO has been orbiting Mars since 2006, taking a host...

Mars probe may have spotted lost rover 01:02 12 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee Objects just 30 cm across can be seen in this MRO image of Pathfinder's landing site (Image: NASA/JPL/U Arizona)The 63-centimetre-long Sojourner rover (which appears multiple times in this composite image by Pathfinder) was last seen at a distance of 13 metres from the lander. New orbital images suggest it later came within about 6m, after the lander's death (Image: NASA/JPL/U Arizona) The most powerful camera ever sent into orbit around Mars has spotted yet another lander lying lifeless on its surface: Mars Pathfinder, which...

WASHINGTON - NASA's best effort to find a missing Mars space probe have failed, scientists said Tuesday as they began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse. After more than two weeks of silence from the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA will make other tries to locate it, but scientists were pessimistic. "We may have lost a dear old friend and teacher," Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program said in a news conference. The $154 million surveyor, which was supposed to last only two years but continued sending data for almost a decade, is the oldest...

Five and a half years after it descended into the Martian atmosphere and was never heard from again, the Mars Polar Lander may have been found. Photos taken from orbit by another NASA spacecraft, the Mars Global Surveyor, show a white dot - presumably the lander - within a dark gray oval apparently created by blast marks in the soil from the lander's rocket engine. About 1,300 feet away is a white blob that could be the lander's parachute. The site falls within the 40-mile-long, 10-mile-wide ellipse near the Martian South Pole where the Polar Lander was expected to end...

Scientist Spots What May Be Missing Mars Polar Lander NASA Craft Vanished During a Landing Attempt on Red Planet Six Years Ago By ALICIA CHANG, AP A NASA image may show the craft's parachute. A white dot labeled MPL a few hundred yards away could be the lander. LOS ANGELES (May 6) - Nearly six years after NASA's Mars Polar Lander vanished during a landing attempt on the Red Planet, a scientist said he has spotted what appears to be wreckage of the spacecraft. The observation came during a re-examination of grainy, black-and-white images taken by the orbiting Mars Global...

Scientists have revealed the full technical details of their discovery of vast reservoirs of ice beneath the Martian surface. So much ice has been found in the polar regions that if it were to melt it would deluge the planet. The ice may stretch far underground to regions where it is warm, raising the possibility of warm caverns of meltwater in which scientists hesitantly speculate conditions could be suitable for life. But they caution that we may never know until we have rock and ice samples returned to Earth by an unmanned probe for analysis. Third time lucky William Boynton,...