Friday, 16 January 2015

Lost Beagle Found

Great news, Beagle-2 did manage to land safely after all.  At the time, you may remember, the method of using airbags to bounce on landing was widely blamed for the failure.





The European Space Agency has announced that the probe, which was due to land on Christmas Day 2003 has been spotted by the hi-res camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. That in itself is a remarkable achievement as Beagle-2 would only have been two metres wide if fully deployed.

The initial analysis of the photos is that Beagle landed successful and managed to deploy solar panels - crucially, however, these weren't all deployed and so not enough power was generated for the probe to operate.

What should have happened
A damn'd near thing!

7 comments:

  1. Well done Beagle 2, that's brightened my afternoon.

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  2. Heard on the radio today (or it might have been the telly - shows how much notice I take of it) that some 'authorities have said the mision should never have been undertaken because it was done on a shoe string. I prefer to think the mission should have been properly funded. If British scientists can achieve what they have over the past twenty years or so with about five bob and a book of Green Shield stamps, just think what they could have done with decent resources.

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  3. First they force them to smoke all those cigarettes, then they send them to Mars - shameful...

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    1. On the bright side, it means that they can now take down the home made A4 photocopies from the telegraph poles and lampposts; "Lost - one beagle - reward offered."

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  4. I do get a kick out of all things interplanetary, thanks for sharing, Edwin!

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  5. Loved this story! But what was really depressing is discovering it was eleven years ago. If someone had asked me I would have said three or four years ago!

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