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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 18, 2015

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BEAGLE2 MARS PROBE HAS BEEN FOUND   

by Hazed

The Beagle2 which was lost on Mars back in 2003 has now been spotted on the planet’s surface – and it looks like it made it down in one piece.

The probe was launched from the European Space Agency’s ship the Mars Express on 19 December 2003, and should have used parachutes and airbags to ensure it touched down safely. Mars Express snapped a picture of Beagle2 as it left the mothership, but once it entered the Martian atmosphere radio contact was never established and it was assumed that the probe hadn’t survived the descent or the landing. There was speculation that the density of the atmosphere had been thinner than expected, which would have meant that the probe travelled too fast as it approached the surface – but nobody knew for sure what had gone wrong.

Beagle2 had been designed on a very small budget of just £50 million, by a team from the UK. Much of the blame for the failure was laid on poor management and inadequate testing.

But now the lander has been spotted, apparently intact, in pictures taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. From the rather smudgy images scientists guessed that the problem was simply that the solar panels, which were meant to unfurl like a series of petals, didn’t open out properly. The radio antenna was underneath the petals and was therefore unable to be deployed, thus there was no communication with the lander.

They speculate that this failure could have been caused by a heavy bounce on landing, or a punctured and slowly leaking airbag not separating sufficiently.

Whatever the cause it’s clear that the lander came so very close to being a success. Rather than being a complete failure, it was just a near miss.

The failure of Beagle2 had a positive effect, in that a report on the loss made many recommendations which have since been followed by landers – including that communications with future probes should be maintained throughout the various descent phases.

Beagle2 wasn’t the first Mars mission to end in failure, nor the last. The list of ships that were destroyed on launch or failed at some point during the mission is very long. Look at the second source link below to see just how many times we had to try before the first success, and how the failure rate continues to be high even now.

Einstein said that insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In the case of missions to Mars, we can be grateful for the tenacity shown by various space agencies in carrying on their insane efforts!

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30784886

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