British Scientists Keep Up Hopes For Survival Of Mars Probe

Channelnewsasia.com ^ | 26 December 2003 | Agence France Presse

[johnny7]

Two American mobile landers, Spirit and Opportunity, are due to arrive on Mars on January 4 and 24.

Boy... you can tell how they hated to let this get in the article. I bet the cause of Beagle 2's failure has a Made in France label on it.

[buffyt]

I am keeping my fingers crossed. The Wright Brothers weren't successful on their first try either. In just 100 years I am amazed at how far flight has come.........

[RightWhale]

There are several more communicstion attempts programmed into the lander for a few days, and then the lander will begin sending a morse-code SOS as long as it can. It's far from over, but the attempts aren't 24/7 anyway. All kind of low-key.

[fhayek]

My bet is that the Martians don't speak French, in which case, the Beagle 2 isn't malfunctioning, it is just being arrogant.

[CasearianDaoist]

Well let's keep our fingers crossed - our landers have a much more demanding landing profile that the Beagle2. It is a little early to start crowing yet, particularly after the Polar Lander fiasco. If one of them makes it, however, I will be out in the streets shouting.

[thesummerwind]

Fugettaboutit. The Martians grabbed it.

[CasearianDaoist]

It;s a British lander, or so I thought. I think the Mars Express is mostly German. What I don't understand is why they keep doing things that we did years ago? Why can't they show some originality?

[r9etb]

bet the cause of Beagle 2's failure has a Made in France label on it.

Need I remind you of a certain pair of rather embarrassing all-American Mars mission failures in the past few years?

I don't know what it is about Mars, but the success rate for Mars missions is remarkably low (see this link for a summary). The most recent failure was the Japanese Mars-B mission, last month. (That mission has the ignominious distinction of having failed twice...)

[Prodigal Son]

. I bet the cause of Beagle 2's failure has a Made in France label on it.

Well, to be fair, most Mars missions that have attempted to land on the surface have been failures.

[Prodigal Son]

What I don't understand is why they keep doing things that we did years ago? Why can't they show some originality?

Why do we keep running the hundred meter dash in the Olympics?

[RightWhale]

Why can't they show some originality?

Any suggestions? Landing has been done. Orbiting has been done. Mixing metric and English measure has been done. What else could they do?

[Torie]

I just read in this book that if Earth were 5% closer to the sun, the oceans would evaporate, and if 15% father away, freeze, and that the Earth needs a large moon to keep it from oscillating with drastic climate changes (apparently the moon was created when something close to the size of Mars hit the Earth, and sprewed out about a quarter of its mass out into space, which condensed into the moon), and needs a molten core to have magnetic field to keep out the bad rays, and to create a planet with plate tectonics and topography so that it is not all underwater, and a big asteroid to hit it at a timely moment to wipe out the dinosaurs, so that large mammals could fill the niche, and well, aren't we darn lucky to be here to savor this mortal coil for our alloted time?

[Dutch Boy]

Those Martians shot down another of our probes..... I guess SDI works.

[longjack]

 

Beagle 2

Beagle 2 on Mars: The ESA-Scientists imagined that the landing of their electronic snooper would have looked like this model drawing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REUTERS

Beagle 2 should have landed on the red planet like this (Computer Simulation)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Spiegel-Online"....Beagle 2 auf dem Mars zerdeppert?

AP   / ©  SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003

Longjack

[pa_dweller]

Beagle's call signal -- a nine-note tune composed by the British pop group Blur

Excerpt of another tune composed by British group Queen:

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone and another one gone
Another one bites the dust yeah

[mikegi]

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2003 -- 2355 GMT (6:55 p.m. EST -- Thus far this evening the Jodrell Bank radio observatory has not detected any signals from Beagle, project officials report.

From SpaceFlightNow.com's Mars Express site. The Beagle2 has gone tits up. I guess all the recent failures make the original Viking landers all the more impressive. Of course, you'd have to compare present-dollar costs of the Viking...

[McGavin999]

They need to be patient.

[RightWhale]

compare present-dollar costs of the Viking

Let's see, 2 for $1 billion is $.5 billion per landing.

0 for $30 million is $ 'infinitely many' per landing. Well, that's arithmetic for you.

[BenLurkin]

"It's dead, Jim."

[Analyzing Inconsistencies]

So much could begin to be possible if only we could get beyond the monopolistic corruption that still pervades our space programs:

Related thread:
Did Astrium, an ESA-anointed monopolistic contractor, actually WANT its lean-budgeted Beagle 2 Mars mission to fail in order to secure greater funding for subsequent interplanetary missions funded by increasingly stimulated European taxpayers?