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Ok, but I have a question now: what has the Mars Odyssey been doing since it reached mars? Taking pictures right? So: can't it take a picture now of the possible landing place?

ElPelado wrote:Ok, but I have a question now: what has the Mars Odyssey been doing since it reached mars? Taking pictures right? So: can't it take a picture now of the possible landing place?

It probably can, but it'd have to be able to get (a) a decent shot (ie flying right overhead) and (b) have the resolution to see the rather small Beagle 2 probe. (and even then it'd be about a pixel across at most). I think the THEMIS imager resolution is something like 19 m/pixel, which is way too low to see Beagle, and possibly even the parachutes.

Oh, and the landing ellipse is about as wide as London, so there's a lot of area to cover too.

Following the disappearance of the Mars Polar Lander during its attempted landing in 1999, an extensive but unsuccessful search was undertaken using the high-resolution camera on the Mars Global Surveyor. MGS also attempted to image the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, whose location on the surface was known, but the resolution of the MGS camera was inadequate. Beagle 2 is smaller, so there seems little chance that it could be found using the spacecraft currently in orbit.

- Hank

Nor can I think of any way that a picture of the probe would be any help in establishing contact with it, or getting it working again.

Grant

But determining the exact cause of the failure might help with future probe designs. Seeing a new crater, for example, might indicate that the aerobraking didn't work as expected.

selden wrote:Seeing a new crater, for example, might indicate that the aerobraking didn't work as expected.

Ha! You deploy a postively British level of understatement, there, Selden ...

Grant

Just throwing something anywhere onto a planets face and hoping that everything will work well, seems to me like a declaration of war against murphys law - no doubt who will win.

There where quite some funny 'theories' here what could be happend:

1. The first bump hit exactly the edge of a big rock giving a fast horizontal spin to the whole thing - well they say beagle is about the shape of a car wheel, so it keeps on rolling and rolling and ...

2. All went well but with the last bump it got stuck into a small deep slot between two big rocks. So it's working, but only with small slice of sky to send to - nobody will ever find him again.

3. It finally stops by gently ticking against a rock with a vast, heavily eroded edge - which then crumbled over it. It would be able to work - if anybody would dig it out.

4. ... lot's of more weird scenarios ...


Don't mind, I still hope they get him in the end.

maxim.

Well, the time has almost come for the first attempt to make contact with Mars Express, tomorrow January 7th at 12:15 GMT. The results of processing the data will not be expected until 15:00 GMT..........

Good luck to them, I hope beagle is ok.

As a correction to my previous post regarding the likelihood of spotting Beagle 2 from orbit, recently the MGS team has implemented a new resolution enhancement technique (using image motion compensation) which allowed them to identify the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft on the surface. Beagle 2 itself would still be out of reach, I would guess, but the parachute and airbags might be visible. I understand that Mars Express will also be used to look for these items. But in either case I suspect that any identifications would be tentative at best. The 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may do the trick, if it is made available for the search.

- Hank

HankR wrote:As a correction to my previous post regarding the likelihood of spotting Beagle 2 from orbit, recently the MGS team has implemented a new resolution enhancement technique (using image motion compensation) which allowed them to identify the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft on the surface. Beagle 2 itself would still be out of reach, I would guess, but the parachute and airbags might be visible. I understand that Mars Express will also be used to look for these items. But in either case I suspect that any identifications would be tentative at best. The 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may do the trick, if it is made available for the search.

- Hank

Well Mars express has the German Made HRSC camera on board, with a claimed resolution of 2 meters / pixel

http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/english/projekte/mars-express/hrsc/

RIP Beagle 2, I really do not think there is much hope for you now

A shame...
We hope this can help us to learn and make the next probes better...

No, sadly I think it's kaput too. Actually, I feared it was kaput right from when it didn't call in, but I didn't want to assume that it had been lost back then.

ElPelado wrote:We hope this can help us to learn and make the next probes better...

... and at first take the step from a passive landing procedure to an active one - Spirit did it well.

maxim

NASA has just released it's first high resolution image of a (very) small area of the supposed Beagle 2 landing area, without any sign of the lander.
The image was actually taken on January 5th by MGS.

Read more about it on the website!

Colin Pillinger is holding a discussion at the Royal Society on Monday 8th March, 7:00pm GMT, concerning Beagle 2 and future projects.
You will be able to witness this event 'live' at the following link;
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/live