Wreckage Of Beagle 2 Found? |
Wreckage Of Beagle 2 Found? |
Dec 20 2005, 01:07 AM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 3-July 04 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 91 |
Wreckage of Beagle found scattered in Mars crater
Talk about being unlucky assuming this is confirmed. |
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Dec 20 2005, 01:40 AM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 43 Joined: 10-December 05 Member No.: 605 |
Unlucky? Seems pretty lucky for Pilinger if it checks out...
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/i..._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/)? |
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Dec 20 2005, 02:04 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1281 Joined: 18-December 04 From: San Diego, CA Member No.: 124 |
Dr. Pillinger, Dec, 2003
QUOTE Professor Colin Pillinger, lead scientist on the Beagle 2 project, said this was the "absolutely worst case scenario". But he added: "We'd have to be incredibly unlucky that it went right down this crater." Dr. Pillinger, Dec, 2005: QUOTE “It’s a bit like hitting the side of the pocket in snooker,” said Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, who led the mission. “The plan was for it to bounce along a flat surface, but instead it seems to have hit the wall of the crater and that messed up the bounce sequence, damaging the lander. If this is all true we were very unlucky. A sideswipe like this was just what we didn’t want.” I shan't be going to Vegas with the Good Doctor. (Though I hope he has been saving his good luck for his fight with MS) -------------------- Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!" Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test |
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Dec 20 2005, 03:00 AM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2262 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Melbourne - Oz Member No.: 16 |
I didn't see one on the page linked by imram but the BBC has a picture.
I hope they have a 'before' shot, else I'm going to be more than a little skeptical. James -------------------- |
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Dec 20 2005, 03:31 AM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 510 Joined: 17-March 05 From: Southeast Michigan Member No.: 209 |
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.
-------------------- --O'Dave
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Dec 20 2005, 05:15 AM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
QUOTE (jamescanvin @ Dec 20 2005, 03:00 AM) I didn't see one on the page linked by imram but the BBC has a picture. I hope they have a 'before' shot, else I'm going to be more than a little skeptical. James The BBC image show exactly the same feature linked in ermar post, but negative/contrast-enhanced version. Below I made a resume poster of identification... If identification is correct, there is a commonality between Opportunity and Beagle: both landed inside craters of similar sizes...! Howewer, looking to the high-res crater images, I'm very skeptical too. A promising elevated structure visible in original 1.5 m/pixel MOC view (lower inset) seems not visible in the cPROTO obtained in April 2004 (upper inset), obtained under similar illumination condition; the presumed "airbag" feature in the crater center doesn't convince me... -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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Dec 20 2005, 07:04 AM
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#7
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Member Group: Members Posts: 356 Joined: 12-March 05 Member No.: 190 |
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?
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Dec 20 2005, 08:33 AM
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#8
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
QUOTE (dilo @ Dec 20 2005, 05:15 AM) If identification is correct, there is a commonality between Opportunity and Beagle: both landed inside craters of similar sizes...! Well - to be fair, Oppy didnt land in a crater, it rolled into one I just saw CP on BBC Breakfast News, and he was fairly cautious that Unless B2 broke up high in the atmosphere and burnt up, there should be SOMETHING on the ground. A new impact crater, or a parachute, or a parachute and some airbags etc etc depending on how far the whole thing got. Given how easily the MER chutes were spotted - SOMETHING should be visible, and this is as good a candidate as anything, so it gives a specific target for HIRISE, and given the HIRISE data flow, I'm going to be hooked on the data when it arrives Doug |
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Dec 20 2005, 09:38 AM
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#9
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
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 |
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_* |
Dec 20 2005, 09:45 AM
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#10
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Guests |
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. |
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Dec 20 2005, 10:05 AM
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#11
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
ORRrr....
Design them with the ability to navigate themselves to locally safe places to land during terminal descent. Doug |
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Dec 20 2005, 10:38 AM
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#12
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2262 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Melbourne - Oz Member No.: 16 |
QUOTE (dilo @ Dec 20 2005, 04:15 PM) The BBC image show exactly the same feature linked in ermar post, but negative/contrast-enhanced version. Below I made a resume poster of identification... Ah, yes, sorry didn't notice ermar's second link (it's been a long day) Thanks for the poster, very useful. Looks like a crater to me.. maybe with some kind of, err, abyss! It's hard to tell for sure. James -------------------- |
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Dec 20 2005, 10:58 AM
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#13
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
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 |
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Dec 20 2005, 11:03 AM
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#14
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
It's a good candidate for the remains. Better candidate than that smudge in the polar layered terrain they suspected was Polar Lander.
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Dec 20 2005, 11:47 AM
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#15
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Data from http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r16_r21/im...6/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 |
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