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I mentioned the other day that I was probably going to watch a documentary on Discovery Channel about the All-British probe Beagle 2 which is hoping to prove the existance of life on Mars. It's hitching a ride on ESA's Mars Express and is hoping to land on Christmas Day this year.

Anyway, my fears about the programme being all about Blurs music were unfounded, the programme was quite good and a shame it was only 30 minutes long, but here is a gem of a quote from the show that I thought I'd share with you all;

Alex James (BLUR bass guitarist) asked the question "Beagle 2 is quite tiny & it's gonna be going pretty fast & it's gonna be quite an impact with the Martian surface which is pretty hard - how can you be sure it's not gonna fall to bits!?"

The reply from Colin Pillinger (the mastermind behind the project) "Well we're going to slow it down quite alot to start with, then there are a series of parachutes that will deploy that will bring it down to about 40 miles per hour. When it finally strikes the surface it will be cocooned in gas filled bags which will allow it to bounce more softly -but it's still the same as pushing your computer off the end of the desk and expecting it to work!"

Lastly heres a link to the website;
http://www.beagle2.com/index.htm

regards
TERRIER

Anyway, my fears about the programme being all about Blurs music were unfounded, the programme was quite good and a shame it was only 30 minutes long

I saw it too & have to agree- good, but too short.

Colin Pillinger wrote:but it's still the same as pushing your computer off the end of the desk and expecting it to work!

Does that take into account the lower Martian gravity..? (1/3 of the earth's)

Would 1/3 gravity only mean that it's like dropping from only 1/3 the height, or would it also have a softer landing?

Let's see if I can do this.

The acceleration of gravity at the surface of the Earth is approximately 2.63 times greater than at the surface of mars.

Given 10 kg mass dropped from a height of 10m, here is what the velocity of each upon impact with the respective planets' surfaces:

V=(2AD)^.5

Vearth= (2 * 9.8 * 10 )^.5= 14 m/s
Vmars=(2 * 3.73 * 10 )^.5= 8.64 m/s

In terms of the kinetic energy each has upon impact:

Ek=.5MV^2 (or You can use the equation E=MAD, mass *Acceleration * distance)

Ekearth=.5 * 10 * 14^2 = 980 J (joules)
Ekmars=.5 * 10 * 8.64^2 = 373 J

At the instant of impact, the object landing on earth has 2.63 times the kinetic energy as the one on mars.

So the object does seem to impact with approximately 1/3 the energy as on earth.

If we drop the same object on earth from a height of 3.802 m (10/2.63),
this is the result we get:

E=MAD = 10*9.8*3.8 = 372.5 J

The same result as a 10 kg mass dropped from 10 m on Mars.
This is of course ignoring drag force of the atmosphere.

Hope this is useful
Regards,

So far, so good! They've managed to release the probe without any problems, and Beagle 2 is now on it's way to Mars. Hopefuly it will land safely in the early hours of Christmas Day (central european time)

http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMSSY2 ... dex_0.html

Here's a view of Earth from the Beagle 2 landing site (10.6N 270W) on 12/27/2003 at 19:01 UT, as seen in Redshift4:



Celestia provides a similar view, of course.

Let's hope the Beagle 2 spacecraft lives to see it!

- Hank

Beagle 2 should have landed, but we're past the first deadline for receiving a signal from it, and there's no sign of anything yet

Still, hopefully Mars Express should work OK, even if Beagle 2 doesn't...

If Beagle 2 is truly lost, it will be a big disappointment. The success of Mars Express, while important for science, would be small consolation for the human spirit. Let's hope for good news from Jodrell Bank.

- Hank

Here's the latest news;

No telemetry from Beagle 2 was received during this morning's passage of
NASA's Mars Odyssey over the Isidis Planitia landing site.


Professor Colin Pillinger, lead scientist for the Beagle 2 project,
commented that this certainly does not mean that the probe had been
damaged during its descent. There were a number of possible
explanations, the most likely being that the Beagle 2 antenna was not
pointing in the direction of Mars Odyssey.

The next opportunity to communicate with Beagle 2 will be late this
evening (between 10pm and midnight GMT) when the Jodrell Bank
Observatory will listen out for a signal from the lander.


The Beagle 2 Team

Let's keep our fingers crossed

The last news are the spacecraft is crashed in the Mars surface. Not hope in ESA. I hear in the radio minutes ago.

Jordi wrote:The last news are the spacecraft is crashed in the Mars surface. Not hope in ESA. I hear in the radio minutes ago.

At this stage, that's pure conjecture.

Right now, it's too early to say that it's crashed - Jodrell Bank hasn't had a look for it yet, and will do this evening (UK time). Though if we don't hear from it in the next day or two, then it is probably more likely that something catastrophic has happened.

Jodrell Bank has not read any signal from the Beagle 2...

No joy from Jodrell Bank -- not a good sign. I have a very bad feeling about this. It sounds too much like the deafening silence from NASA's ill-fated Mars Polar Lander in 1999. I guess there's still a glimmer of hope for Beagle 2, but it's fading fast.

- Hank

No, it doesn't look good does it...

*Now* it might be safe to say that it's possibly not survived the landing...

HankR wrote: It sounds too much like the deafening silence from NASA's ill-fated Mars Polar Lander in 1999.
- Hank

Hank:

Doesn't all deafening silence sound pretty much the same?

Just trying to inject a little levity at a sad time.

All of the scientists who were looking forward to the data this probe would produce are certainly disappointed. But as an engineer, I can tell you that it is no fun for the designers, either. You spend years of your life making day-to-day difficult decisions, sitting through long meetings, getting beat up about slipped schedules, losing sleep over tough-to-figure-out bugs, having fierce religious debates over what seem to be the important issues, etc. And then... it's all over, with no possibility of recovery. AHHHHHHH! Nothing to show for it but the paychecks. (Not that I'm complaining about paychecks.)

Tim Crews

(Developed quite a bit of the software on the IRIDIUM satellites, to be greeted by the "deafening silence" of no subscribers -- although now that system seems to have risen from the ashes.)

Beagle 2 are destroyed over the surface of Mars, are confirmed by Russian Agency Space in the last news.

Yeah sure Jordi...

I'm not feeling all that confident myself now... Although hopefully we will get some news when MEX gets into it's final orbit, and is able to pick up beagle's signals, around the 2nd of January or so.

Sky News are reporting that it's internal clock may have been accidentally reset during landing, so it's signalling to Odyssey at the wrong time...

At least the situation now is different to the Polar lander/climate orbiter fiasco in '99 - back then it was just one lander, one orbiter; now it's one orbiter, three landers! 25% success rate so far- Mars Express is doing fine, and chances are that the Rovers will be ok when they land too... We'd have to be very, VERY unlucky to lose 2 or more landers...

And then of course, there's stardust on Jan 2nd to remember too...!

Jordi wrote:Beagle 2 are destroyed over the surface of Mars, are confirmed by Russian Agency Space in the last news.

I don't know where you're getting your news, but it seems to be consistently wrong. There's no evidence as yet that tells us what's happened to Beagle 2, least of all whether it's been 'destroyed over the surface of Mars' and nobody has any orbiter in the right place to image the Beagle 2 landing site as yet.

I'd suggest confirming any 'news' you find on other sites before you post here. Your news source seems to be over-simplifying things greatly, and not reporting things very accurately.

What I read is that in January 4th the orbiter will be able to recieve the signal from the lander. And another thing that may gives as a little hope is that, as I read, it is possible that the radio telescope and the NASA's orbiter are not well prepared to read the signals, thats why they will wait until the 4th when the Mars Express will try to hear from it, because it is specialy prepared to read the lander's signal...


but something that doesnt smell good to me is that there are so many theories about what may have happened up there... I dont know...

No signal from Beagle 2 was heard again today during Mars Odyssey's second pass over the landing site. Further attempts by Odyssey and Jodrell Bank will be made over the next several days, but it looks like our best shot will be when Mars Express is in position to overfly Beagle 2 on January 4. This is the only communication mode that was actually tested, so it presumably has the greatest chance of success.

- Hank

ElPelado wrote:but something that doesnt smell good to me is that there are so many theories about what may have happened up there... I dont know...

That's because so many things could have gone wrong . I don't think it was being monitored as it entered the atmosphere, so nobody knows if the heatshield failed, or the parachutes failed, or the airbags failed, or if it's landed OK but the antenna's broken, or anything else.