[X] My Assistant

[imran]

Wreckage of Beagle found scattered in Mars crater

Talk about being unlucky assuming this is confirmed.

[Phil Stooke]

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

[mcaplinger]

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.

Well put. It also seems to me that many of the "features" are aligned with the downtrack direction of the image and are thus likely to be residual pixel-to-pixel variations.

People can believe what they want, but I think there is an element of wishful thinking in the Beagle team's claim. MSSS took these images in 2004 and examined them closely. The MSSS position is made pretty clear on the page at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/31/ -- "no incontrovertible evidence of the Beagle 2 lander was found within the areas imaged by MOC". To make claims that the Beagle landing system was without flaws and failed only due to highly-improbable terrain factors would, it seems to me, require evidence far less equivocal than this.

It seems a bit odd that it took them over a year to "painstakingly study" this image and come to their conclusion.