Declassified records from Russia's space agency now indicate that the dog died of overheating within a few hours of launch.
Posted on 12/21/2003 8:34:46 AM PST by RJCogburn
On Christmas Day, a small round object will streak like a shooting star across the skies of Mars before landing like a beachball, starting a mission that, at last, may reveal whether life exists on Earth's beguiling neighbour.
The 400-million-kilometre voyage of Beagle 2 culminates Europe's first solo mission to explore other planets, and places the continent in pole position in a race with the United States to answer one of the greatest puzzles in space.
"For 5 000 years, people have looked at Mars and wondered if there is life there, and it falls to this generation to do it," said Beagle 2's lead scientist, Colin Pillinger, a professor at Britain's Open University.
"The question that is uppermost in my mind is, 'Are we alone in the Universe?'
'Are we alone in the Universe?' "Finding that we are not alone in respect of our Solar System would mean to me that the Universe is teeming with life."
On December 25, six days after it was released like a gently spinning top from its mother ship, Mars Express, Beagle will plunge into the thin martian atmosphere at more than 20 000 kilometres per hour, with a conical shield soaking up the initial heat from friction.
Then a parachute should open to slow the descent until, in the final stages, gas bags will inflate around the lander, bringing it to a bouncing halt in Isidis Planitia, a flat sedimentary basin near the equator.
If all goes well - a mighty if, given that the payload - is highly sophisticated and there are fears that vicious dust storms are brewing on Mars - Beagle will then open out like a fob watch, and four solar panels will flop out.
Soon afterwards, the little lander has its first chance to send the folks back home a sign of life, which should include a radio callsign composed by the British pop band Blur.
The history of exploration of this planet is a graveyard of broken dreams Then, after a check to ensure that its systems are okay, Beagle 2 can start to move a robot arm, a triumph of miniaturisation that has seven tiny tools designed mainly to assess whether water exists or has existed on Mars and whether there are the remains of carbon-based lifeforms on its ruddy surface.
In orbit overhead will loop the unmanned Mars Express, stuffed with sensors to closely map the martian surface, analyse its atmsophere and peer beneath the surface dust and rocks with ground-penetrating radar.
Hard on the European Space Agency's heels are two American mobile geological landers, Spirit and Sojourner, which are due to arrive in January and seek largely the same goal.
Both ESA and NASA deny that there is any competition, and place the emphasis on their long years of happy collaboration.
But scratch the surface, and it is clear that the European scientists are thirsting for the glory of being first to know whether the Red Planet has borne life or has the potential for it.
The reason for the big uncertainty is that there is a lot of evidence that if Mars is cold and dry today, it was once in its early history, perhaps 3.8 billion years ago, warm and wet.
If liquid water did flow, could life have evolved there? And where is the water now? Images sent back to Earth from US orbiters suggest that there could be abundant underground water, or that there was until recently.
Mars has always cast a spell on Earth, either as a divine body, a fictionalised source of invasion (HG Wells' The War Of The Worlds) or as Earth's verdant twin (Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles).
Dreamers see it as mankind's first colony in space, a stepping stone to a wider conquest of the Solar System and, who knows, the galaxy beyond.
But the history of exploration of this planet is a graveyard of broken dreams.
Of the 32 probes sent to Mars since 1960, only nine have been a success.
Nineteen were outright failures, the latest of which was Japan's probe Nozomi, which was abanoned on December 9 after its electronics were damaged by a solar flare.
Beagle 2 is named in honour of HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin, the pioneer of the theory of evolution, on his historic 1831-36 trip around the world.
Declassified records from Russia's space agency now indicate that the dog died of overheating within a few hours of launch.
Somebody has to be FIRST! Whos to say that is'nt us..- Carl Sagan..
Wow, I'm looking forward to it.
Merry Christmas, Patrick
And to you, Victoria.
Must be a time lord.
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