All Rights Reserved Beagle 2
Posted on 12/13/2003 6:22:39 PM PST by blam
Inside Mission Control (UK), preparing for Christmas Day landing on Mars
Eye 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 named, is the command centre for the European Space Agency's first attempt to explore the surface of another planet. It is where a team will direct Beagle 2, a tiny, shell-shaped, British-built lander, which could find the first proof that alien life exists.
Since this is "mission control", you might expect vast video screens overhead with state-of-the-art computer simulations sketching out the elliptical flight path of their spacecraft, glowing maps of the globe, weather data and flight telemetry read-outs ...
This is what you will find at Nasa's Mission Control Centre for space shuttle missions in Houston, Texas, purpose built at a cost of $250m (£145m) 10 years ago, or the control centre for Nasa's own $850m journey to Mars.
At "mission control" Leicester, however, is a seven-strong group of academics working in an anonymous white room about 20m square.
In Leicester, there are no giant plasma screens hanging on the wall, just one slim electronic message board. It has a simple job: counting down to the arrival of the Beagle 2 lander on Mars. There are also three coloured lights: red, amber and green. A red light will tell people that data is coming in from the Red Planet.
Here is a lecturer's whiteboard, which has rows of "interplanetary cruise control" statistics scrawled in felt-tip pen. The ranks of computer terminals are crammed together on ordinary office desks. Yet in one corner is a genuine piece of space technology - a working replica of the Beagle 2 spacecraft expected to land on Mars early on Christmas Day. It is a small, shell-shaped device, which now has three circular "leaves" holding solar panels pealed open over a laboratory bench.
Arching out of its belly is the "Paw", or Position Adjustable Workbench, a purpose-built arm that carries X-ray and gamma-ray detectors, a stereoscopic camera, a rock-grinder and a specimen-collecting "mole" that will burrow into surrounding rocks and dust.
Here, a team of seven engineers, geologists and computer specialists will precisely check each movement of the arm and mole, using a 3-D model of the Martian real estate that Beagle 2 will explore, before exact instructions are sent out to the lander itself 250 million miles away on Mars.
This Friday will be one of the most critical days in Beagle 2's mission - the day it separates from the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft and satellite observatory and begins its four-day descent to the Martian surface.
It will mark the completion of a six-month voyage and a six-year project, sparked originally by a study of meteorites from Mars and capped by Nasa scientists' announcement in 1996 of evidence of traces of fossilised bacteria.
When in 1997 the ESA announced a Mars mission to be launched this year, a team led by Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University proposed attaching a lander to look for life and conduct chemical and atmospheric analysis - Beagle 2. The name celebrates Charles Darwin's epic voyage aboard the Beagle, which led to the writing of On the Origin of Species.
This second Beagle was launched aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 2 June. If all goes according to plan, scientists should receive data from the Martian surface on Christmas Day - and the public will be able to watch.
Tens of thousands of schoolchildren, teachers and tourists are expected over the next few months, gazing through three large picture windows installed a foot away from the test bench.
"Nasa will probably be watching this with great interest," said Derek Pullan, a geologist at the University of Leicester and Beagle 2's instrument manager. "But it does benefit the space centre having a public portal. It's a crowd-puller and crowd-pullers generate revenue."
It is a symptom of the desire of Britain's space pioneers to build up popular support for a properly funded programme - a dream that has been undermined by lack of interest if not obstruction from civil servants and ministers for the past 30 years.
The current Science minister, Lord Sainsbury, gave £25m towards the £160m expedition costs - a signal that the Government is now interested in space. Yet the OU team that built Beagle 2 had no more than £30m to play with - by contrast with Nasa whose two "exploration rovers", Spirit and Opportunity, cost $645m (£370m) to develop and build.
Despite its modesty, this mission could make history. Dr Mark Sims, the "mission manager", argues that his modest team is in keeping with modern space exploration. During quiet periods, they have been keeping track of Beagle 2 from a couple of laptops at home.
"You don't need a big control centre to operate a small space craft. You don't need a massive team. This illusion you need 200 or 300 people for an unmanned space mission is just that - an illusion."
Something tells me, this guy's talents are being wasted here .... :-\
Yes, could be interseting. The Japanese had a probe on the way too...it was abandoned and sent off into deep space this week. (I think the solar activity damaged it, not sure though)
Mars Express spacecraft with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC)
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| How the mission was named: | Mars Express is so called because it will be built more quickly than any other comparable planetary mission. Beagle 2 is named after the ship in which Charles Darwin sailed when formulating his ideas about evolution. |
| Prime contractor: | Astrium, Toulouse, France, leading a consortium of 24 companies from 15 European countries and the US |
| Launch date: | 2 June 2003 |
| Launcher: | Soyuz/Fregat, built by Starsem, the European/Russian launcher consortium |
| Launch mass: | 1120 kg (including 113 kg orbiter payload and 60 kg lander) |
| Lander: | Beagle 2 |
| Orbiter instruments: | High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC); Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyser (ASPERA); Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS); Visible and Infra Red Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer (OMEGA); Sub-Surface Sounding Radar Altimeter (MARSIS); Mars Radio Science Experiment (MaRS); Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer (SPICAM); |
| Spacecraft operations: | European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany |
| Ground stations: | ESA ground station in New Norcia, near Perth, Australia. Foreseen operational duration: One Martian year (687 Earth days) is funded. The spacecraft is designed for a further Martian year's operation. |
| Arrival at Mars: | December 2003 |
| Journey time of lander from orbiter to surface: | Five days |
| Lander lifetime: | 180 Martian days (about six Earth months) |
| Lander mission management: | University of Leicester, UK |
The Mars Express Orbiter will:
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The Beagle 2 lander will:
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I like it. Simple. Not more than you need. I hope NASA is taking notes.
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