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NASA's tough little Mars lander phoned home yesterday to tell its makers it had done what its European counterpart failed to do and survived a 120km fall to the red planet. The Spirit spacecraft survived a hell ride through the thin martian atmosphere as it braked from 19,000km/h in six minutes while its heat shield reached temperatures similar to those on the surface of the sun. NASA scientists had devised a series of communication tones to allow them to confirm the lander, surrounded by a cocoon of airbags, had "bounced down". But there was a nail-biting 15-minute wait before the...

Still no sign of missing Beagle Beagle 2 vanished during landing Beagle 2's mothership will begin searching for the missing probe in the next few days. Mission scientists said on Sunday that further attempts to contact the British-built lander had failed. They are pinning their hopes on the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express, which will be in position to look for its "baby" on Wednesday. The news came as the US space agency Nasa celebrated the safe landing of its Spirit rover on the Red Planet. It sent back images of the rocky, barren surface of Mars within hours...

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...

Sweet smell of failure That rugby business confused things for a while, but now the stubbornly silent Mars probe Beagle 2 has reminded us what Britain does best: heroic failure. And Stuart Jeffries, for one, is grateful Tuesday December 30, 2003 The Guardian Four reasons have been given to explain why the Beagle 2 hasn't sent a signal from Mars. One: it is possible that a computer glitch may have affected transmission timings. Sounds plausible. Two: the probe has a misaligned or obstructed antenna, which thwarted the Beagle from cheering us up with interplanetary signals during the bleak midwinter. Quite...

<p>LONDON, England (AP) -- Scientists have ruled out two possible explanations for their inability to pick up signals from Europe's Beagle 2 Mars probe and discovered another -- a large crater where the vessel was supposed to land.</p> <p>The European team has received no transmissions from the craft, which was supposed to touch down on the distant planet on Christmas Day to begin its search for Martian life.</p>

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...

The problems that befell the Mars mission won’t stop the dawning of a new era in the space race. Iain S Bruce explains why Hurtling through time and space, the Mars probe landed, bounced and rolled to a stop. Waiting back on earth for robotic arms to crank into life, extend four delicate solar panels towards the stars and begin broadcasting a signal of success, mission control stopped, the world held its breath, and then nothing happened at all. It was no way for a 93 million mile journey to end, but even as Beagle 2’s British launch team bravely...

LONDON (AP) - Scientists again failed Saturday to pick up a signal that would confirm Europe's first Mars lander arrived safely on the Red Planet. A third attempt by NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey - at about 1:15 a.m. EST - made no contact with the Beagle 2, which was supposed to have landed at 9:45 p.m. EST Wednesday. The tiny craft should have started emitting its signal within a few hours. Britain's Jodrell Bank Observatory, which has twice scanned the Martian surface with its huge radio telescope, also could not detect a signal from the tiny lander, which was sent...

The Beagle was meant to land on Mars early on Christmas Day There has been no signal detected from the surface of Mars on Friday that would indicate the UK-built Beagle 2 lander got down safely. The US orbiter Mars Odyssey flew over the assumed landing zone just after 1800 GMT but heard no transmission. The giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in northwest England also failed to make contact after listening to the planet for hours on Friday evening. Scientists refuse to give up hope and will continue to scan Mars for a call. Team leader Professor Colin...

"Greenwich, Mars base here, the Beagle has been stranded!" Hopes for British Mars probe recedingBy David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 27/12/2003) Hopes for the British Mars probe Beagle 2 were starting to fade last night after it failed to make contact for the second day running. Nasa's orbiting spacecraft Mars Odyssey swept over the landing site between 5.25pm and 6.45pm but was unable to pick up a radio signal. Prof Colin Pillinger waits to here news about Beagle The night before, the huge Jodrell Bank radio telescope also tried to detect Beagle's faint whimper from Mars with no success. It...

LONDON : British scientists kept hoping for the survival of the Beagle 2 Mars lander despite its silence since it arrived on the planet's surface early on Christmas Day."I'm not feeling too down yet," said Colin Pillinger, the scientist in charge of the lander project, part of the European Space Agency's first independent interplanetary mission. He said at least 13 attempts to get in touch with the lander had been programmed in coming days, including another try by the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank later Friday to pick up Beagle's call signal -- a nine-note tune composed by the...

Last Updated: Thursday, 25 December, 2003, 12:27 GMT No Mars signal from Beagle probe Scientists wait for the signal from Beagle 2 Scientists have failed to pick up an expected signal from British-built spacecraft Beagle 2 telling them it has landed safely on Mars. The £35m ($62m) probe should have landed at 0254 GMT on Christmas Day after a six-month flight. Nasa's Mars Odyssey orbiter has since flown over its landing site but failed to detect the expected call sign. Lead scientist Professor Colin Pillinger insisted that "it's not the end of the world". The giant Jodrell Bank telescope, in...

Bureaucrats and their pet contractors often claim that a government program's failure is "proof" that it was underfunded. Did Astrium (the monopolistic manufacturer of the U.K.'s $50 million dollar Beagle 2 Mars project) actually WANT that lean-budgeted mission to fail this week? Some in Europe have complained that the socialist European Space Agency has anointed basically one contractor monopoly, Astrium. We already know that similarly socialist NASA has anointed its own for Mars as well: Lockheed Martin. LockMart subsequently profited from its 1999 Mars mission failures. Was Astrium's goal a funding increase in the wake of this awareness-enhancing Mars failure?

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

This may be the last Christmas it is possible to celebrate confident in the assumption that life is unique to planet Earth, that therefore human beings with their consciousness, intelligence and moral sensibility are the culmination of creation, and that thus they enjoy a special relationship with their creator. All going well, on Christmas Day a probe aboard the first European mission to Mars will touch down on the Red Planet and begin searching for what scientists call "signatures of life". The probe, Beagle 2, will measure the ratio of different types of carbon found in Martian rocks. As explained...

<p>PASADENA, Calif. — The prospect of life on Mars has charged the public imagination for more than a century, ever since astronomers first spied what they thought were canals dug to irrigate the planet's ruddy surface.</p> <p>But after spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes began taking a closer look at the planet, evidence of the canals, and the Martians who presumably created them, quickly vanished.</p>

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...

Life's Working Definition: Does It Work? By The Staff of Astrobiology Magazine posted: 07:30 am ET 15 April 2003 Is it alive? How to define 'life' is a sweeping question that affects whole branches of biology, biochemistry, genetics and ultimately the search for life elsewhere in the universe. Comparing the semantic task to the ancient Hindu story of identifying an elephant by having each of six blind men touch only the tail, the trunk or the leg, what answer a biologist might give can differ dramatically from the answer given by a theoretical physicist. However, some initial agreement is...