Wreckage Of Beagle 2 Found? Options

[RNeuhaus]

Thanks to The Messenger for the references which are very good.

Rodolfo

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

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 ...

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

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?

[lyford]

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 little guy!)

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 P Word, but this seems right on the edge of perception. We will see I guess, or not!

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

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?

[RNeuhaus]

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

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

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

[tedstryk]

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.

[djellison]

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