http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1943819,00.html
Talk about being unlucky assuming this is confirmed.
Unlucky? Seems pretty lucky for Pilinger if it checks out...
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/jan_01_beagle2_pt2/index.html
That link seems to cover the Beagle landing area (albeit some time before the landing), but I'm not quite sure which crater is the suspect one or what the relevant pictures are...
(could be feature discussed in http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/31/)?
Dr. Pillinger, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3354271.stm
I didn't see one on the page linked by imram but the http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4542174.stm has a picture.
I hope they have a 'before' shot, else I'm going to be more than a little skeptical.
James
Yep, shades of the false ID of MPL's remains earlier this year. If anything, it gives MRO one place to look in the haystack of the ellipse.
Ohh yes! If I squint hard enough I can just make it out and if you squint juuuust a bit harder you can make out some channel like forms which appear to be in the shape of canals that..... Seriously, I think this is silly, we're nearly looking at individual pixels here people, just above the noise floor and we're talking about a humungous haystack. They're two parallel lines, wouldn't sand dunes be a slightly more prosaic cause?
Just had a thought - if the impact into the side of the crater wall was enough to lunch the spacecraft, then how did the spacecraft trigger the pyros to jettison the three airbags? They couldnt be that far apart yet not seperated could they? WHo knows, hopefully MRO will tell us what's really in that little crater in 12 months time or so.
Doug
Hmmmm...
So there was no error or malfunction of the lander.
But it seems that landing into hollowed places is not uncommon. Imagine it had landed a bit more to the right, in the larger crater... rolling all along the slope, to end up bogged into a dune in the bottom.
This is, I think, a lesson to retain: we cannot design landers able to land only into ideal flat places. The landers must be able to land into harsh places, including craters and slopes.
ORRrr....
Design them with the ability to navigate themselves to locally safe places to land during terminal descent.
Doug
I went and found the orig MSSS image, got the IMG, NASA-Viewed it, did a trick a read that Phil uses by essentially subtracting from the whole image a vertical average of every column of pixels ( to subtract some of the streaking - I duplicated the image, resized to one pixel high, resized to the full size, inverted and put at 50%...ish) - then enlarged by 50% with simply nearest neighbour interpolation to not infer anything that isnt there, and then did the same trick of Phil's again to get rid of a little more noise, and came up with this.
Doug
It's a good candidate for the remains. Better candidate than that smudge in the polar layered terrain they suspected was Polar Lander.
Data from http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r16_r21/images/R16/R1602082.html Courtesy NASA/JPL/MSSS - go play 'spot the chute' - I cant find it, then again, I couldnt find the Pathfinder one either.
The lables are my best guess from the description on the BBC News website
Doug
I bet it landed OK but did not function due to technical difficulties.
You heard it here first People!
** Ducks at tomatoes!**
Nice image processing, Doug - or 'the other Phil' as I think you should now be called.
I have no confidence in this finding, alas. In particular, as Doug's enlarged image of the crater shows, the three-dot pattern suggested to be the airbags could be matched to a thousand locations in that MOC image alone. I thought the MPL location was much more solid, and that turned out to be a mistake.
Phil
I am not buying it, although I will suspend judgment until I have seen high resolution images of the rest of the crater. It is hard to believe that there are no marks in the crater (At least the part seen, and yet it bounced around in there hard enough to destroy it and then propel it out of the crater, after which, rather than bouncing, the little Beagle made this 20-30 meter splat mark. I buy that this could be the Beagle, but I would content, unless more coverage of that crater proves otherwise, that if it is the Beagle, it came hurtling out of the sky and splattered there, fortunately being near a crater, providing a great excuse. MRO's resolution and multispectral capabilities can resolve both ends of this, scouring for other marks and seeing if there are color variations that indicate that this is anything but a small, young, natural crater.
I dont think you've read the news report correctly... he's not suggesting Beagle 2 created the crater when hitting the surface....... but landed in it.
http://www.beagle2.com/index.htm The Beagle website has a VERY thorough explanation of the news as well as a few bits of information not in the news reports.
I agree - it's not much and certainly far from conclusive..
But, given fairly comprehensive MOC coverage of the landing ellipse, it's basically all there is. It's not much, I know, but it's arguably the only target worthy of HIRISE's attention.
Doug
I was not aware of Beagle 2 mission. After reading Beagle 2's pages and I realized that its landing design was not redundant. It only used the aerobaking during the initial landing, used one kind of parachute and then...air bags.
It is too dangerous since after the parachute, there is no means to break if the probe landing speed is too fast. By incorporating the rockets propulsion as the last resource since it can adjust the landing speed before the probe touch down on the land.
By that time, no one knows by sure about the atmosphere density and others ephemeral Martian parameters and the Beagle 2 landed with a static landing system by aerobraking, parachute and air bags. I seems that it is one of the greatest errors.
I concur Volcanopele about the importance to have good detail pictures of landing place before any planned landing. This will help to find fast the landing site by just comparing among the images by the computer.
This was always regarded by engineers before the landing as one of the most dangerous aspects of the Beagle design. The assumption (or hope) was that, being so much lighter than Pathfinder, a parachute and airbags alone without a last-second solid retromotor would be adequate -- but this is one of the most likely possible causes of the failure, given the fact that they had some problems with the airbags even during ground testing and had to fall back on JPL for emergency assistance in retesting them.
The Search For Beagle 2
http://www.beagle2.com
Technical Contributors: Stuart Hurst, Colin Pillinger, Jim Clemmet, Lutz Richter, Dave Northey, Lester Waugh.
Image Analysis by Guy Rennie.
Mars Images Courtesy Mike Malin.
Given how close MER-A (I refuse to use that cornball name "Spirit") came to disaster because of the unexpectedly low density of Mars' upper atmosphere -- even after its hasty last-minute reprogramming to open its parachute earlier, it came within 3 seconds of opening the chute too late to avoid a crash -- I think this has an excellent chance of being the fatal flaw in Beagle: it just came down too damned fast due to the lower than predicted Martian air density, and kaplooey. We'll never know whether some additional flaw also existed that would have done it in anyway, given the flaws that the failure board found to be riddling its design -- but the air density problem by itself would have been enough, and is very likely to have happened.
I am only now coming to realize how hard it actually is to land on Mars because of its peculiar halfway nature. As Ed Strick (and Rob Manning) say, it's very hard to utilize either purely aerodynamic braking or purely rocket braking to land on it, and Mars' thin air density has a height profile such that it's difficult even to combine the two effectively enough to get the braking job done in time. We may actually have been very lucky up to now to pull off as many successful Mars landings as we have -- most of the previous failures (Mars 2, 3 and 7; Polar Lander) were due to unconnected technical problems, but Mars' atmosphere alone may seriously endanger landers, and may conceivably have done in both Mars 6 and Beagle as well as almost killing MER-A. And the bigger the lander, the more serious the problem rapidly becomes.
If i'm remembering this correctly, and it was a long time ago at the first post landing press briefing, didnt one of the landing team say that the parachute deployed about 1 mile below the predicted altitude?
Unfortunately, only the data sets for EDL are out, and not the derrived onces such as altitude, speed, temp, pressure etc etc. Once they are, I'll put some graphs together for all three ( MPF, MERA, MERB ) - and see what story they tell. Infact, I dont know if they actually will be out - I'd have thought if they were going to be, they would have been by now.
Doug
Is it me or is there a radial pattern of dark streaks around the dark 'impact' spot? I see about 5 streaks -maybe indicative of debris or dust-removal by the impact?
They don't seem to be related to the little crater itself.
Nico
Also, every similar crater in the area doesn't show a spot that dark with such clear contours, within the shadow area. Could be dust buildup..maybe...but I think they're right on this.
Thanks Sunspot.
Nico
If this crater indeed turns out to be Beagle's resting place, it would really be a mindblowing case of bad luck... Just seeing how sparse the crater density is in the area and it managed to drop right into one.
Opportunity was said to have struck a whole in one, but this is beyond words.
At least Mr. Pillinger will be able to take some comfort in the fact Beagle 2 succeeded in reaching the ground more or less intact. But fate has, once again, turned her back on him...
It was originaly suspected that the crater visible in these images might have been produced by Beagle 2 impacting the surface at very high speed, not that Beagle 2 may have come down IN the pre-existing crater itself. The former scenario is the one discounted by MSSS.
Take a look at slide 5 on the Beagle website:
Also......will MRO REALLY be able to resolve this for what it really is?
I am still not convinced about the Beagle 2's landing position. My questions are:
It was redited after a more toughts and research.
Dec 19 8:11:00 Seperation from Mars Express. Beagle 2 will orbit around Mars for almost 6 days.
Dec 25 2:47:48 Desaceleration. Highest temperature is 1,700 Centigrades at 120 km heigth.
Dec 25 2:51:02 Open parachute at the height of 2,6 km of Mars surface.
Dec 25 2:51:20 Turn on the altimeter and it checks the altimeter 10 times per seconds.
Dec 25 2:51:45 Inflate the air bags at 275 meters of altitude. The altimeter detects the presence of surface and activate the inflation of airbags.
Dec 25 2:52:00 First bounce (15 seconds) at 58 km/sec.
Sixth bounce (10 seconds)
Tenth bounce (6 seconds)
Dec 25 2:54:00 rest on Isidis Plantia after 12 bounces.
-Separation of airbags from Beagle 2 which was inside of a big Airbag.
-The three airbags were fired away from Beagle 2.
Dec 25 5:30:00 Try to contact with Mars Odyssey.
1) The picture shows FOUR dark spots. They aren't of the same size. The Right and down are of similar sizes, the Up is bigger and the Left is the biggest. Different sizes.... Let suppose there is 3 airbags which are of white color and the fourth might be of lander, heatshield or backcover. Then let suppose that the heatshield or backcover must fall far away from the mini-crater. Because of the different sizes of airbag might lead to the different degree of deflation?
2) According to the above picture, the Beagle 2 might be found with its open top cap because of its greater size (the Left Hand) or it has not opened its cover (the right hand). Well, now where is the heatshield or backcover?
3) Beagle is so light (perhaps between 60kg in Earth and 22 kg in Mars). It is rather very light and it would not have bounced and traveled much distance as MER did. According to the initial estimates, it would have bounced 10 times which is not the same as mentioned in the picture with 4 disturbed top surface. The distance of bounce would be greater and not merely inside of 20 meter crater.
4) However, the first bounce is big and it might be the first bounce which was of one big airbag.
Rodolfo
MRO will be able to identify the airbags if they are there. 1 - 1.5 m across would be a minimum of 3 full pixels across, potentially 9 to 12 pixels of area for each airbag, and almost as imporantly, some element of colour.
Compare my simulated images of Oppy at MOC-CPROTO and MRO-HIRISE - granted, these are probably a little optimistic, but hey...
Doug
Helen just found this....
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6590449480
Doug
Dont forget the equiv. prop mass of the RAD and TIRS rockets in the MER backshell. I dont know if the figure are out there, but they bring just about 900 very-ish-KG from about 180mph to 0mph in about 3 seconds - it's quite a whack and so there must be quite a lot of mass within that lot.
What still suprises me is the ammount of metal about on these vehicles when carbon composites would surely offer advantages in strength and mass. OK - so it lunched itself in the process of landing, but the basic B2 structure was actually built by the composites wing of the McLaren F1 team.
Doug
The news that Beagle 2 may have been spotted on the surface of Mars in the immediate vicinity of where it was expected to land was welcomed by the European Space Agency.
Full story:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMAPB8A9HE_0.html
Oh, gadfry, Messenger, are you still peddling that stuff about major violations of the laws of gravity elsewhere in the Solar System? Especially when the only thing we need to explain these crashes is the major fluctuation in Mars' air density already known to exist?
And Mars 3, don't forget, actually made it to the surface -- it just broke down, for unknown reasons, 90 seconds later. V.S. Perminov, who was associated with the Soviet Mars program, writes that he suspects a static discharge caused by the major planetwide dust storm in which Mars 3 landed as a possible cause (and, in fact, static discharge was also listed as one of the multitude of possible causes for the Deep Space 2 failures).
He also provides -- for the first time, I think -- an explanation for the Mars 2 crash: because of the Soviets' lack of faith in the quality of their own deep-space radio tracking, the craft was equipped with its own Autonav system that sighted on Mars several days before encounter and made a final automatic course correction to put the lander into the right entry corridor. But because the Soviets had slightly incorrrect data on Mars' true ephemeris (which, ironically, was corrected only a year later during the US/Soviet exchange of planetary probe information), the lander entered at too steep an angle and therefore crashed (shades of Mars Climate Orbiter!) He doesn't speculate on the cause of the Mars 6 failure -- although, given all those crumbling transistors on the 1973 Mars probes, it may simply have failed to fire its last-second retrorocket.
I should add that the Polar Lander failure report does not list lower-then-expected air density as a possible cause for that failure -- and the software flaw discovered by the Board is fully adequate by itself to explain that crash (although it's always possible that something else wrecked the mission even before then, since a number of possible alternative causes ARE listed).
Note that the Viking landers directly measured the gravity of Mars while sitting on the surface with their entry/descent accelerometers and got a decently accurate estimate for each lander of it's radius from the center of the planet. That would not have been possible if there were non-square root, or non-trivial "second order" whatever that means in this context, deviations in Mars' gravity from that determined by inter-planet peturbations, flyby estimates, and orbital measurements.
Messenger's gravity 'thing' has appeared here before, and he was suspended from the forum for a month for continually spouting pseudo science.
Infront of everyone here - go down that path again, and I'll just ban you. I'm not having that pseudo-science junk in this place. Speculation, yes. Discussion, yes. Debate, yes. Crap? No.
Doug
Well, I cannot make up anything from the images and I guess we shall have to wait untill Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is operational in April - May 2006...
Meanwhile:
Merry Christmas & Enjoy the end-of-year period !!!
... all the best for the New Year 2006 !!!
Thanks to The Messenger for the references which are very good.
Rodolfo
Talking about spacecraft that kept working...
I believe that of the 1997 Pathfinder-Sojourner combination, first the base station failed meaning that the little rover couldn't get nor send images/instructions.
The rover had a tiny heat source of its own and it was designed to start up again if it didn't hear from Earth for 7 days ...
Yep. The rover was also programmed, if it didn't hear from the lander after a certain time, to assume that it might have wandered into a terrain feature that was blocking the radio signal, and to then automatically drive in a curve until it heard from the lander again. Nobody knows how far the Little Lost Rover drove after the lander failed, calling futilely for Mama. Pathetic, isn't it?
Bruce, you just blew out my anthropomorphometer!
Though I too have imagined the lil' puppy rover wandering..... and wondering where momma went... *sniff*
Uh, sorry, must have got something caught in my eye....
Hang in there http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/Li%27l_Brudder)
And to get back on topic of the current thread's canine, I remain highly skeptical that this is really Beagle.... I hate to say the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia, but this seems right on the edge of perception. We will see I guess, or not!
Just a hypothetical thought here - but say for example Beagle 2 DID land successfuly in the location the Beagle 2 team are suggesting but missed the crater it "might" be resting in by a few metres. Would the probe have continued to bounce and roll right into the giant crater to the right?
It might be. However, up to now, we are not wearing the proper eyeglasses so we cannot see any good pictures until after MRO starts to work...Hope that the end of the year 2006 we are going to have a much better eyeglasses to spot with certainity to Beagle 2.
Rodolfo
Don't know if You all noticed the redesign of the Beagle 2 website, which now focuses on the images of the possible location of the ill-fated Beagle 2 lander:
http://www.beagle2.com/index.htm
Philip
It would have been interesting, had MGS been in an appropriate orbit at the time (I think it had just arrived when Pathfinder failed, but it may not have been there yet - at best, it was in a looping orbit not suitable to look for a lander), might it have at least picked up that Sojourner was transmitting. Pathfinder suffered from having to operate with no orbiter support, both in terms of data transmission and the fact that its site had to be picked from old kilometer-scale Viking images.
Sojourner was on 459.7 MHz, and MGS Relay is on 401.5275 MHz and 405.6250 MHz.
Soj-MPF was 9600 bps I think, where as MGS relay is 8 or 128.
I'm not sure if any other assets might have been able to listen in on Sojourner directly, but I dont think MGS could
Doug
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