Beagle 2 found by MRO/HIRISE. |
Beagle 2 found by MRO/HIRISE. |
Jan 12 2015, 10:30 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 282 Joined: 18-June 04 Member No.: 84 |
Friday 16th January
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/ja...MP=share_btn_tw QUOTE A British Mars lander that was lost on its way to the red planet more than a decade ago may have been spotted by an orbiting spacecraft.
The Beagle 2 lander was supposed to touch down on Christmas day in 2003, but after it was released from its mothership, Mars Express, the dustbin-lid-sized craft was never heard from again. But Beagle 2’s final resting place may finally have been discovered. Scientists operating the HiRise camera on Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will take part in a press conference this Friday to announce “an update” on the ill-fated mission. |
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Jan 19 2015, 02:40 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 107 Joined: 1-August 14 Member No.: 7227 |
Here are a couple more Beagle2 photos showing the UHF antenna (yellow square) I read in an article that one "lesson learnt", already being adopted in upcoming Exomars mission, is the lander to continuously send data to orbiter during EDL. I think an additional lesson learnt is "don't cover the only one antenna by 4 plates", as one single failure out of 4 will compromise whole mission. Maybe a "contingency omnidirectional low power autonomous-battery external antenna" will become a standard in all next landers? Looking at the details. The landing site is about 5 km from the middle of the post-landing tracking ellipse, but about 30 km from the middle of the pre-landing target ellipse. Some reports confuse the two. It was not 5 km off target. I am curious: why did it take so long to find Beagle2 if it is within the planned landing ellipse? Is this the first ever shot HIRISE image of the area? The three gas bags protecting Beagle were supposed to be 'ejected' away from Beagle after landing This is weird, I was not aware of it. Looking for and EDL animation I found this also weird video; guess made by who? http://youtu.be/YjNyweyGwHQ Airbags do not even appear in this video... Beagle is quite crashing rather than landing! A better, official video from internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20071006015240/...t_a_640x368.mov From: http://www.beagle2.com/resources/video-album.htm lo-res animation attached ( 160x192).
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Jan 21 2015, 04:44 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Senior Member Posts: 136 Joined: 8-August 06 Member No.: 1022 |
I am curious: why did it take so long to find Beagle2 if it is within the planned landing ellipse? Is this the first ever shot HIRISE image of the area? There is a MOC image footprint over the lander, taken several months after the loss, IIRC. But the image was not received on Earth. -Tim. |
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