Beagle 2 in HiRISE, Possible Targets Options

[elakdawalla]

EDIT: Moved these posts from the Feb 14 HiRISE Release thread to here to collect all Beagle 2 search related stuff in one place.

I'm downloading them now too -- guess I can't blog about them until I've examined them very carefully!

For a bit of history on the search,
Here's a blog entry I wrote about this spot a while ago
Here's the MOC team's take on that spot
And here's the BBC page with the Beagle 2 team's take on it

EDIT: and here's my updated blog entry with links to the Beagle 2 landing ellipse images split up into 40-MB chunks.

--Emily

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Hmm...after a quck glance nothing on these pictures seems to be a sign from Beagle. Otherwise, the crater is indeed an interesting feature. Look at the walls - what could this be? Hematite?

[elakdawalla]

There are two HiRISE images labeled as being Beagle 2 related sites. One of them, 2347_1915, clearly crosses the ellipse, and includes the dark crater imaged by MOC. The other one, 2136_1920, is centered 0.1 degree of latitude north and 0.2 degrees of longitude east, or about 6 and 12 plus or minus 3 kilometers north and east, of the first one. I am having a hard time locating this on the best MOC context image I can find. Is it out of the ellipse drawn by the MOC team?

Here is the MOC ellipse at 30 m/pixel:


Here is 2347_1915 at 30 m/pixel:


And here is 2136_1920 at 30 m/pixel:


--Emily

[elakdawalla]

Here's the area right around that dark crater.


--Emily

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

So... it's sure that Beagle 2 is not in this area... or am I wrong?

[djellison]

Well - I've not looked at every sq. foot of the >1GB that those two images include....but I intend to.

Doug

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Well - I've not looked at every sq. foot of the >1GB that those two images include....but I intend to.

Doug

Doug, can you recommend me a good jp2 viewer? Do I have a chance to open this with an ancient hardware - CPU 800 Mhz, 192 ram?

[djellison]

Sorry to be brutal - but with that spec, it's just not worth it. I use a package recommended here - http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/jp2.html - called OpenEV. 1.7 Ghz Centrino CPU and 2 Gb of ram is barely enough.

Doug

[elakdawalla]

I am working on cutting up the part of the .jp2 that crosses the ellipse into more manageable chunks of 30-40 MB each in PNG format. I'll post those on the blog by the end of the day today, so if your computer or your modem (or your patience) can't manage the 800 MB .jp2 files, wait for those.

--Emily

[djellison]

One of them's easy to place - but not t'other - is it even in this shot?


edit....found it - and updated the JPG.

Doug

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[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Here's the area right around that dark crater.

Notice what apparently is a large boulder/ejecta block at the 11 o'clock position of the crater. I'm reminded of House Rock at the Apollo 16 landing site.

[djellison]

A small house - I make that rock approx 1m across

This bright rock is on the northern inner slope of the larger crater just to the east - 6.5 metres across...that's more housey

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[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

A small house - I make that rock approx 1m across

Okay, then Outhouse Rock, which was a smaller rock immediately adjacent to House Rock at the Apollo 16 site.

Or, given the size, perhaps "Doghouse Rock"

[djellison]

To be fair you posted a link to "Astronaut Charles Duke stands at rock adjacent to "House Rock""



Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

To be fair you posted a link to "Astronaut Charles Duke stands at rock adjacent to "House Rock""

Actually, the rock in that photo depicted in that photo isn't House Rock, which was much larger.

[djellison]

I know - that's what the caption says.

Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

I know - that's what the caption says.

I lost track of the scale because I forgot I was looking at a HiRISE image instead of a MOC NA image.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Emily has a new blog entry.

[elakdawalla]

...and it contains the links to the pieces of the one HiRISE image that crosses the ellipse. Go have a look and see if you can find anything interesting!

Emily

[dvandorn]

Outhouse Rock was indeed the smaller rock (roughly the size of an outhouse) that had split off from House Rock. Interestingly, while Charlie Duke christened the large rock House Rock ("Well, that's your House Rock, right there"), he made it sound like they had talked about finding "rocks the suize of houses" pre-flight, but according to all of the interviews I;ve read, they hadn't -- Duke just came up with the name on the fly.

That said, I bet there are tons and tons of house-sized rocks on Mars...

-the other Doug

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Thank you, Emily! The chunks will help us a lot.

[nprev]

Does anyone happen to know the IR characteristics of Beagle 2's chute, solar panels, etc.? I've got this imagery software called ENVI on a temp license for a class, and would like to try looking over these chunks with it.

Thanks!

[djellison]

When I get home tonight I'll check if any specific materials are used in the 'chute or airbags - but I would expect them to be fairly identical to MER. The airbags were made by the same people for instance. The book I referenced in the simulation image is essentially THE opus on Beagle 2. If it's not in there, it's probably not in the public domain at all.

Doug

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[ustrax]

I have a candidate for the heatshield...

A candidate...

From the image I post (not the best quality I know...) it might not look so different from any other rock but if you check Emily's full image (bottom row, center), you'll see that this specific spot (located approximately at 12h inside the big crater on the left center of the image) looks more "shiny" than the surrounding features.
The problem is that I don't find anything resembling other components...
I'll keep looking...

[djellison]

Starting a thread for possible B2 stuff within HiRISE images...I think it needs its own thread.

People may find these usefull..


http://video.beagle2.com/Descent/play_descent_a_640x368.htm
http://video.beagle2.com/Landing/play_landing_b_640x368.html

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[ustrax]

Doug

From your 3D rendering I would change my candidate from possible heatshield to possible Beagle 2...

[djellison]

Fair play to you - it's an interesting target.

The thing I think we need to be careful of is that these images are re-projected and so any single cosmic-ray event or anything else of that nature (as shown here - http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2007/d..._1920_cut_b.jpg ) might - even if only a single pixel in the downlinked image - show itself as more than a pixel in a reprojected image.

That said - I've done a comparison between that target and the the heatshield in my sim - and it's not a million miles apart. I do my sim's at 33cm/pixel now - it just seems more realistic in terms of resolving power - so I've upscaled my 33cm/pixel render to 25cm/pixel and put it side by side.

I personally don't expect to see a deployed B2 on the surface. If it were there, I would expect to see a very obvious chute nearby, as well as airbags.

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[ustrax]

I personally don't expect to see a deployed B2 on the surface. If it were there, I would expect to see a very obvious chute nearby, as well as airbags.

My point too Doug...

And thanks for the images, that's precisely the place I was talking about!

While you were doing you're comparison I was entertained with something similar...
(I've rotated your rendition 90º to the left)

So...If it not deployed how would it look like?...

[djellison]

Depends how much of the EDL sequence worked.

Burnt up during entry : Nothing on ground
Survived re-entry but dead on arrival : that estimated crater size
Main Chute deployed but no airbag inflation - Large chute, probably a small 'splat' mark nearby.
Chute deployed - airbags inflated but B2 died on impact - Large Chute, one large composite airbag mess of all 3 bags.

Everything worked but B2 didn't open and deploy - Large chute, three airbag lobes, and an unopened lander would look fairly similar to the heatshield alone I would guess. HOWEVER - that would suggest some sort of failure after a great landing but before deployment and I find that a hard scenario to believe.

I think you're probably reading too much into a probably imaging artifact - BUT - it's certainly on the list of 'hmm - interesting'

Also - be carefull of rotating things. I set the lighting in that simulation to match the average lighting for HiRISE looking at near equatorial sites. I've not adjusted it to exactly match the parameters of the image we're looking at - but it's there or there abouts. Rotating things puts the shadow in a different place etc etc.


Doug

[ustrax]

I think you're probably reading too much into a probably imaging artifact - BUT - it's certainly on the list of 'hmm - interesting'

Yes, probably...as usual...
I'll just let the masters work...

[prometheus]

Beagle Splat?





Looks like the main chute didn't fully deploy and Beagle 2 hit hard.

[ustrax]

Beagle Splat?

Could you give a more exact location?

[djellison]

You're zoomed out by about 5x... to give you a sense of scale - this is at 100% - and is the area you mark as 3 airbags is actually two small craters and a pile of rocks. what you mark as Heatshield is infact a bright dune.


Doug

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[prometheus]

Are we looking at the same area?

[djellison]

Yes - you're zoomed out a huge ammount - perhaps firefox has downsized the image to fit in your browser window?

Doug

[prometheus]

I used Stereo Photo Maker with the 2.5 Mb jpg image. Will download the jp2 and check again. I guess you have done that. Pitty that, it was all there, in a line and what one would expect of a very vertical rapid foiled chute descent.

The three rocks around the dark cross shape with an attached medium bright rock sure looks interesting.

[prometheus]

I used the wrong image scale. Sorry for that.

[ustrax]

I know that I promised to stand still and I also know that you guys are not great fans of this kind of pseudo-perspective but I couldn't avoid it...

But it might help one way or the other.

It looks to me that the spot I indicated is not an artifact, if you look to this image it looks like there is a crater under it and some shadowing.
This also helps me imagine how painful might have been Beagle's end...
Who knows if it might just crumbled down the hill on it's back, does anyone see a parachute there?

[ugordan]

What do you gain by reprojecting the image like that, Ustrax?

That bright feature (artifact ?) does look interesting, though. Still, it seems like a lucky shot to be finding it in the first of the strips covering the entire landing ellipse.

[ustrax]

ugordan, some sense of perspective I don't get with the original one...
It would REALLY be a lucky shot, as I told previously it is just a candidate...
But hey! If it was done once...

[djellison]

I used Stereo Photo Maker with the 2.5 Mb jpg image.

THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.

Instead of looking at a 2048 x 4983 image - get the full-fat 812Mb 28247 x 68730 image

Doug

[djellison]

After The BA mentioned Emily's blog entry about this HiRISE image - Andrew commented on a feature that I've pulled out of PSP_002347_1915_RED_r2c3.png - Alex will be calling it house rock before too long although to be fair - that segment off to the left does look like the orange-segment sort of shape one would expect from the airbags....BUT....if the vehicle was healthy enough to fire the pyyros to drop away from the airbags - one would expect a working vehicle on the surface.

The 'killer find' still has to be either the 10m diameter parachute or a fresh crater + debris.

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[ElkGroveDan]

The 'killer find' still has to be either the 10m diameter parachute or a fresh crater + debris.

Which is why I think we won't have a problem identifying it when it's imaged - it just hasn't been imaged yet. There's a whole lot of that ellipse that still needs examining. I'm guessing it's up-range.

[elakdawalla]

Why up-range? Wouldn't it be down-range if parts of the EDL system (especially the parachute) didn't work correctly?

--Emily

[ElkGroveDan]

I wasn't pegging it the failure on EDL malfunctions. I was thinking of atmospheric aberrations as the cause. (But I haven't really put a lot of thought into it.)

[elakdawalla]

As it turns out, the atmospheric aberrations caused both MERs to land downrange of the centers of their ellipses, so Beagle 2 probably would have done the same (which is why the MOC imaging campaign focused on the eastern half of the ellipse). I don't have any idea what effect EDL malfunctions might have had -- I'm guessing they would also have resulted in a downrange bias but I don't have a clue what the magnitude of that would be, whether 1 or 10 kilometers or more.

--Emily

[ElkGroveDan]

Then I guess I'll only throw down a few small chips on that up-range bet

[Littlebit]

I know that I promised to stand still and I also know that you guys are not great fans of this kind of pseudo-perspective but I couldn't avoid it...

But it might help one way or the other.

It looks to me that the spot I indicated is not an artifact, if you look to this image it looks like there is a crater under it and some shadowing.
This also helps me imagine how painful might have been Beagle's end...
Who knows if it might just crumbled down the hill on it's back, does anyone see a parachute there?

This is certainly a good candidate - If I understand Doug's scaling, the crater is about the right size for a Beagle splat. Spirt's parachute just barely deployed in time to save a similar fate, so splat it could be.

[ustrax]

Here I am again...

I grabbed Beagle's last known image and used it in a personal simulation.
It has some similarities with Doug's original image but quite different from his simulated view.
I also added Beagle 2 dimensions, can anyone tell me if the spot's pixels match those?

[ugordan]

I have to say, that bright object seems to be too bright to be an ordinary rock. It's also slightly blurry which a cosmic ray artifact wouldn't be. I think it's not too far-fetched to suggest that might really be a manmade object. Whether it's the lander itself or a piece of it, who knows?

Then again, maybe it's just one of them iron meteorites...

[djellison]

Remember - a cosmic ray hit might be a single pixel in the collected data - but it will 'grow' over multiple pixels during map projection.

Also...

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2007/d..._1920_cut_b.jpg

There's nothing about the Ustrax target that elimiantes it from being an imaging artifact.

Attached - applying perspective distortion in photoshop on a single white pixel - first just in one direction, then in two directions. See how the dot 'grows'. I don't know how the map projection for HiRISE works - but I imagine it would introduce similar artifacts.

Doug

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[ugordan]

The point about map projection certainly holds. My opinion is still that it's a real feature, not an artifact.

[ustrax]

My oppinion too ugordan, mostly due to the fact that the feature looks like is casting shadow.
But, of course...Doug (from the Cosmic Ray Preservation Fund...) can be right...

EDITED: Doug, as I asked before, do the feature dimensions match the Beagle 2 ones?
"There's nothing about the Ustrax target that elimiantes it from being an imaging artifact."
And the opposite?

[djellison]

As the simulation shows - it would be the right sort of size for the heatshield or backshell or unopened lander - but a deployed lander I would expect to look different. If you were to say "this IS a bit of Beagle 2 - which bit?" - I would say the heatshield. But - if you ask which is more likely - 800 megapixels having the odd imaging artifact or a piece of B2 indicative of the spacecraft making it through entry and deploying it's heatshield but later failing, and that heatshield being visible in the first HiRISE image of the landing ellipse....I'd say cosmic ray hit. I'm not saying it isn't a chunk of spacecraft - and it really does look like a chunk of B2. What I'd like is a HiRISE image targetted directly west of this one - a tiny bit of overlap - but I would expect the 'chute to be back up the trajectory and thus west of the heatshield (same was true of Spirit and Opportunity if you think about it.)

Until we see either a fresh crater or a main chute - I don't think it's wise to say we've found any Beagle hardware - we've simply found interesting targets.

Just thinking out-loud again - the TDI CCD's on HiRISE, there's plenty of scope for a single cosmic ray hit to actually take out a few pixels in one go - 128 lines to have a stab at for each 'finished' pixel if you think about it.

Attached - an extract from the mission report which you can find at http://www.src.le.ac.uk/projects/beagle2/reports.html

Suggestive that the heatshield might be somewhere around 150m downrange from the rest of the vehicle...of course drift under the chute and bouncing around could obviously change that significantly.



Doug

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[ugordan]

If only someone could sneak us the raw, non map-projected image...

[hendric]

Doug,
Have you tried map-projecting your simulations?

[djellison]

There wouldn't be much point - I don't know enough about the map projection parameters to even make a sensible guess. rendering at 33cm/pixel and then resizing to 25cm is going to introduce some of the 'softness' that reprojecting might induce.



Doug

[tuvas]

If only someone could sneak us the raw, non map-projected image...

You wouldn't want a raw image, those a pre-cal;-) But I might be able to sneak a small part of one of the artifacts in one of the images, if you give me some pretty good ideas as to where to find it.

[ugordan]

Well, having a sample of the artifacts wouldn't do much good as we already have that in the latest release. Ideally, the same region we're looking at here is the one we're interested. That must be a pain to locate in the calibrated, non-projected images though...

[ustrax]

Until we see either a fresh crater or a main chute - I don't think it's wise to say we've found any Beagle hardware - we've simply found interesting targets.

Who's saying that?
I, like you, would like to see full confirmation about the nature of the feature, to, in the case of being a cosmic ray, just move to other locations.

[kenny]

Alex is correct. That is a smaller rock beside House Rock, just to the south of it.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images...-116-18653.html

Kenny

[Ames]

Not sure about this one but it looks different to the surrounding features.
Either casting a long shadow or disturbed ground exposing dark subsurface.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/154/3928461...f5a902f21_o.jpg


There are just sooo many rocks that could be airbags, soo many faint craters that look like a parachute.
I am just trying to find anything disturbed, dark, like the splat that oppy's backshell made.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

That feature looks quite interesting actually. Is it a 100% crop? Is it my imagination or are the faint "rays" coming from it?

[Ames]

Yes 100%

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/77/392880515_de61f9a3d4_o.jpg

Red dot marks the spot

From Emily's blog;

http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000858/

[djellison]

Looks like a shadow behind an unusual shape rock. An impact splat would be larger than that (i.e. the best B2 team estimate is approx the crater size I show in my simulation ) - but it's another 'hm - interrsting' target.

A chute will always be very very obvious. The MPF chute is so very obvious nearly 10 years after landing. The MER chutes were very very easy to find - the B2 parachute if it deployed will be similarly obvious - despite being a much smaller lander, it used a similar sized chute ( because it had no retro rockets ) -

Attached is the 'all my hardware' playground for the 3d sims. It's all been seen before - but this shot ( at 33cm/pixel) shows the B2 stuff top left as seen here - then three sets of 'chute - backshell and heatsheild on the right which, from left to right, are Viking, Pathfinder and MER.

B2's chute design was a different shape to the JPL vehicles - but it's a similar size.

The three scenarios I'm interested in are...

1) Burnt up on entry due to unstable aerodynamic design. This is actually what I think is most likely given that the B2 capsule was a significant departure from the 'heritage' of Viking and MPL and actually used the Huygens heatshield shape which makes no sense imho - 1.5bar N2 compared to .05 bar CO2 - very different challenges. If this happened - we'll find nothing in HiRISE ( for a comparison - have we found any MER cruise stage... no )

2) Didn't burn up - but was dead on arrival and simply had a lithobraking impact that would produced a crater as simulated and documented in the B2 report. This would be very obvious in HiRISE imagery imho - MGS has shown us that recent craters are fairly obvious - so HiRISE would see this very clearly - but I would expect this to be at the eastern end of the ellipse if not beyond ( I want to ask the B2 team about this actually - what scenario that ellipse is for ) as there would be no deceleration from drogue or main chutes.

3) Survived entry and then deployed the drogue and the main chute. If we're going to find ANYTHING else - this HAS to have happened and so personally - before considering candidate hardware that isn't a crater - I want to see a chute first because it's a prereq of seing a heatshield (which deployed after the main chute) - a lander or any airbags on the surface.

This is the first sensible thing to search for...
http://www.planetary.org/image/hirise_path...crop_200pct.jpg
(ignoring the backshell)

Doug

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[Guest_Sunspot_*]

OK heres your "spot" resized up by 500%

How many of you have gone through the whole HiRISE image?

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[Ames]

Yep, propbably just a rock

This one is a little different

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/3929680...fde0bc79f_o.jpg

Sunspot, I have been over the whole of PSP_002136_1920_RED.jp2 and am running out of initial targets. Beagle2 is probably not in this set of data. I think this is all just a bit of practice for when we get some swathes from downrange a lttle.

[JTN]

FWIW, I've Zoomified one of the Beagle 2 ellipse HiRISE images. (I was unable to convert the larger one successfully, for some reason, even if I split it up.)

Although given that the Zoomifyer output takes up only 50-60% of the space of the original JP2 even though it's multiply redundant, I'm not sure how much use it is for looking for features at the limit of resolution...

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Are there plans to take more images of the landing site?

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

I don't know if this press release was mentioned but in case it wasn't:

Where is Beagle 2? The search continues
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council
Swindon, U.K.
16 February 2007

[djellison]

Emily pointed out that the Isidis image for Osiris cross-calib just caught the end of the ellipse so I have added it to 'the mix', presented here at 30m/pixel.

Doug

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[FIN Mars]

Beagle 2 Back Shell and Parachute?



Probably not, but still...

[djellison]

Which image and what coords is that from? I woudl concur - very very unlikely, that backshell feature is too large, by about 2x.

Doug

[FIN Mars]

Which image and what coords is that from? I woudl concur - very very unlikely, that backshell feature is too large, by about 2x.

Doug

at the Emily Lakdawalla's website it is picture> Top row, right (20 MB)
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000858/

Object is very close down side and near left side of the picture. Crater nearby object should be find relatively easy.

Sorry my english skills, hopely you undestood something...

do you know when we get more HiRiSe pictures of the landing side?

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Beagle 2 may have tumbled to a fiery doom

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2002...fiery-doom.html

[djellison]

Two things have always put an entry-phase burn-up top of my list of Beagle 2 failure modes. Firstly, the lack of any parachute visible in MOC imagery (which would be very very visible) - and secondly - the fact that the B2 shape was Huygens like rather than Viking like.

Doug

[rlorenz]

Two things have always put an entry-phase burn-up top of my list of Beagle 2 failure modes. Firstly, the lack of any parachute visible in MOC imagery (which would be very very visible) - and secondly - the fact that the B2 shape was Huygens like rather than Viking like.

Eh? Huygens worked - not sure I follow.

Havent read this new australian paper yet ; I always liked the ammonia-leaked-out theory

[mchan]

It could be that a shape designed for the thicker Titan atmosphere may not work as well for thinner Mars atmosphere as a shape designed for thinner Mars atmosphere.

[djellison]

Eh? Huygens worked - not sure I follow.

.01 bar CO2 vs 1.5 bar N2 - there was a chap over at The Habitable Zone who was fairly convinced that Beagle looking more like a small Huygens than a small MPF was a recipe for high mach number problems.

[ugordan]

In all fairness, you can't compare surface conditions to entry conditions both probes experienced. Huygens entered at what, 6 km/s and isn't that a typical Mars entry velocity, too?

The bigger difference could have been entry angle, but even then if you had two identical probes on the outside and their centers of mass were located differently, they could behave entirely differently. A Huygens-lookalike probably isn't a bad thing by itself.

[dvandorn]

As I understand it, though, what's now being speculated is that Beagle 2 failed to successfully cross transition boundaries, not that the heat shield failed during the heat pulse. The shape of the entry vehicle is critical to how the vehicle maintains stability through hypersonic to supersonic velocities, and there are a lot of factors, including the actual atmospheric deceleration rate, that affect how the shape and the regime interact.

Huygens continued to decelerate at a faster and faster rate as it dug into Titan's thicker atmosphere. Beagle 2 continued moving faster for longer after it hit its maximum deceleration (which would have been less decel than Huygens saw, since Mars' atmosphere doesn't thicken with depth to the extent that Titan's does). I would be extremely surprised if Huygens and Beagle 2 were traveling at similar airspeed velocities a minute after the end of peak heating.

You would have to plug in speed, deceleration rate and air density throughout the descent profile for each probe to determine the differences in transition boundaries between the two events. I guess what I'm thinking is that Huygens was slowed more quickly and effectively, and thus plowed through the transition boundaries very quickly, with very little time for the vehicle to become unstable (and, as I recall, there *are* some indications that Huygens tumbled briefly at some points during its descent). Because of the thinner air, Beagle 2 slowed more slowly and spent more time passing through transition boundaries than Huygens did, thus increasing the possibility that both its spin rate and any inherent instability in the aerodynamics of the vehicle's shape would cause the craft to tumble while still in a fairly challenging heating regime.

Make sense?

-the other Doug

[Doc]

Perfectly Doug! But the question now is what the hell persuaded the B2 team to install the Huygens shield? Honestly this is one of the reasons why someone should come with a standard issue book titled 'How to land on different worlds for idiots!'

[mcaplinger]

You would have to plug in speed, deceleration rate and air density throughout the descent profile...

I believe it's a lot more involved than that, since we are talking about fluid dynamic regimes where gas properties are far from ideal, etc, etc. Designing these things is still a black art (literally; I think many aspects of RV design are still classified.)

That said, the Beagle entry design was done by engineers at EADS, and one presumes they had some basis to think it would work. It's not as if they picked the Huygens shape with no justification. My limited understanding is that the RV shape is at least partly a matter of tradition and heritage, not strongly engineering-driven.

[Guest_Enceladus75_*]

So the evidence from new analysis is pointing to an atmospheric burning up for the ill fated Beagle 2. If that truly was the fate of B2, then there can't be any chance of HiRISE finding anything on the Martian surface at Isidis.

It's a darn shame...why was the Huygens aeroshell selected? Did the engineers not realise that the atmospheric dynamics at Mars would be completely different to that of Titan? This appears to be almost as bad a gaffe as the Mars Climate Orbiter mix up of metric and imperial units. Again, I suspect penny pinching and keeping costs cut to the bone was the main problem - Beagle 2 was underfunded - too fast and too cheap!

[mcaplinger]

Did the engineers not realise that the atmospheric dynamics at Mars would be completely different to that of Titan?

Did you read my last post? You guys are way too eager to jump to conclusions without much knowledge of the engineering realities involved. I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the Beagle aeroshell design, but certainly the independent JPL review said nothing about this, so if it was an error, it was a subtle one, not a stupid and obvious one.

[Guest_Enceladus75_*]

Did you read my last post? You guys are way too eager to jump to conclusions without much knowledge of the engineering realities involved. I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the Beagle aeroshell design, but certainly the independent JPL review said nothing about this, so if it was an error, it was a subtle one, not a stupid and obvious one.

OK I take your point, mcplinger...but please, no need to jump down the throats of us lesser mortals who are not aerospace engineers.

I do still hold to my belief that a very limited budget and limited resources to the B2 team was what ultimately contributed to Beagle 2's demise on Mars. As I've heard the saying, you can have two of the three ..."faster, better, cheaper" ... any two, but not all three.

[climber]

A bit OT but anyway, do you know if Phoenix EDL reconstruction help assuming MPL's "ED" must have been nominal so we can assume only "L" failed?

[Stu]

Honestly this is one of the reasons why someone should come with a standard issue book titled 'How to land on different worlds for idiots!'

As the Phoenix team went to great pains to point out as we crept towards EDL, landing on Mars is hard... incredibly hard... teeth-gnashingly, hair-pulling-out hard. I don't think we know what went wrong with Beagle yet, this is just another New Best Guess.

And as the Beagle team had to fight their way through ten different levels of Hell to even get the probe built and taken to Mars, and the probe they designed and built with little support from any Big Money, was a marvel of engineering, "as elegant as a pocket watch" it has been said. If it had worked they'd have been praised to the skies for "exploring Mars on a shoestring" and "upstaging NASA for a hundredth of the money"... Hindsight is always 20/20, and yes, mistakes were probably made, but denouncing them as 'idiots' is very unfair I think.

I spent that fateful Christmas Day going online every twenty minutes, desperate for updates. I had a horrible, sick feeling in my gut all day waiting for news, with hope gradually ebbing away... and if I was that bad, what nightmares the Beagle team experienced I don't like to imagine.

Idiots? Never. I'm still proud of them for even trying.

[mcaplinger]

Here's the Casani report for people who feel like reading it. Note section 6.2.2 in particular.

http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/5278.aspx

[Doc]

Don't you worry Stu, I vented my anger a long time ago on the UK gov't who were supposed to nurture the mission if you will. The B2 team are alright. (seeing that you are british I hope I didn't offend you )

[nprev]

Well said, Stu.

It should also be noted that in engineering we sometimes learn more from failure than from success. Analysis of failure modes often refines (or even defines previously unknown) top-level system performance constraints and inevitably leads to better designs. In that light, B2 is still making a significant contribution to solve the fundamental engineering problem 'how to survive EDL on Mars'.

Certainly not as satisfying as a successful mission would have been, but nevertheless a net gain in human knowledge was realized from B2.

[sci44]

In all fairness, you can't compare surface conditions to entry conditions both probes experienced. Huygens entered at what, 6 km/s and isn't that a typical Mars entry velocity, too?

According to the article, Beagle hit at mach 35, around 12 km/s - it detached prior to orbital insertion, to save MEX a bit of delta-V. For us lesser beings reading this thread, the wiki on atmospheric re-entry is actually pretty decent.

Here's the Casani report for people who feel like reading it. Note section 6.2.2 in particular.

http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/5278.aspx

That is interesting - plenty of critisism but on aeroentry the report states "Both the quantity and quality of the work performed are outstanding."
They were asked to reduce weight from 108kg to 60kg in 1998, and less mass has to mean more susceptibility to any chaotic forces on entry.
On another thread on MEX/B2 I mooted the idea of sending Beagle-3 on an SEP first stage - it could be delivered to GTO as a mission of opportunity (like SMART-1), and take its time to spiral to Mars. An SEP stage would allow a larger delivered mass - indeed as a first ever use of such a delivery method for a planetary craft, it could be seen as a test mission. This time EDL comms would be a must too..

Only this time, instead of Blur, we should ask Monty Python to sponser the mission. Beagle, as part of its EDL, should broadcast "The Liberty Bell" during descent, with the big foot coming down at the time of its landing!

[Paolo]

Beagle 2 may have tumbled to a fiery doom

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2002...fiery-doom.html

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets paper now available for free
See the AIAA siteof the journal under Sample Issue.
There is also a paper on Stardust's reentry available for free

[rlorenz]

Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets paper now available for free

Readers might also be interested in a review I did a couple of years ago on spin of
planetary probes (emphasis was on descent, rather than entry, but it touches on it
and summarizes the various spin rates and spin-separation-umbilical designs used.
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/spinjbis.pdf

I have to say in the process of researching this, I find it very difficult to find
*pre-Mission* calculations of release spin rates for entry vehicles. Notionally the
spin rate should be chosen based on angle of attack tolerance at the entry
interface (which in turn depends on targeting accuracy, as well as the moment
of inertia, the expected disturbance torques and the coast time) as well as
dynamic stability during the entry itself (the subject of this paper). While there
are always post-mission reconstructions etc., I haven't come across a paper
saying 'This is the spin rate we chose and this is why'. (Maybe because of fear
one gets it wrong..?)

This Beage/J.Spacecraft paper may be getting more attention than it deserves -
I can't see any obvious problems with it, but the main message is 'look, here is a
simulation that diverges in the transition regime'. It would be more useful to
show that the same simulation code yields survivable entries for MPF, MER etc.,
and to show what the 'correct' spin rate for Beagle should have been (if, indeed,
any spin rate would have worked....)

A complex problem, verging (as another poster noted) on a black art.

[sci44]

Well the Beagle 2 mission scientists (Pillinger, Smith) themselves remain sceptical of this new report.

(Pillingers quote at the end of that piece is priceless!)

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

By the way, while I respect you opinion, I think that you are wrong.

I have read the report and thousands of critical articles. The British team is very ambitious, but I have the feeling that they always blame the environment. Firstly, the big crater, secondly, the thin atmosphere.

[sci44]

By the way, while I respect you opinion, I think that you are wrong.

I have read the report and thousands of critical articles. The British team is very ambitious, but I have the feeling that they always blame the environment. Firstly, the big crater, secondly, the thin atmosphere.

Well, I am sure you could be right - there *could* be other engineering issues with Beagle-2 beyond "bad luck" factors like landing on the side of a crater, or the atmosphere being too thin. We will never know for sure without EDL data, and I would expect EDL comms would be high on the list for B3. I will not re-iterate everything else from this and other B2 threads - you can even consider sheer dead weight as being a factor - in 1998 the Beagle-2 team had to reduce the allowed probe weight from 108kg to 60kg - from pure engineering intuition, a lump of lead might be less susceptible to chaotic forces than a light object.. My real point is, why give up on the first go?

And at that point - you turned to discussing politics. That is a banned subject at UMSF. That has been deleted, as has the reply - Admin.

[djellison]

Something I learnt from Mark Sims (Beagle 2) last week. Beagle's parachute, which is the big clue I've been looking for in MOC and HiRISE imagery... was fairly transparent, and sort of beige.

[Phil Stooke]

That's going to make it a lot easier!

Memo to future mission planners: make parachute visible...

Phil

[ElkGroveDan]

Memo to future mission planners: make parachute visible...

A discussion we were having last night