[X] My Assistant

[SFJCody]

Usual stuff. Mentions some uncertainty over the future of ExoMars (delay to 2015?).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...paceexploration

[djellison]

I'd want to see a different engineering philosophy for a Beagle 2.1 I'm sure that it could be done within the volume and mass budget that B2 had, but it would be a whole lot easier at the 100kg-all-up level. That, I would put money into.

Doug

[PaulM]

I'd want to see a different engineering philosophy for a Beagle 2.1 I'm sure that it could be done within the volume and mass budget that B2 had, but it would be a whole lot easier at the 100kg-all-up level. That, I would put money into.

Doug

I had the great privilege of working with some of the Beagle 2 hardware designers between Beagle 2's launch and landing on Mars. They were some of the best engineers that I have every worked with.

I told one of these engineers that Spirit would send out beeps of varying frequencies during EDL and that each of these beeps would indicate what state Spirit was in. For example one frequency might indicate that the parachute had been deployed and another that the airbags had inflated. The engineer told me that due to weight restrictions Beagle 2 could transmit no telemetry during EDL.

I mentioned to the engineer that the report on the loss of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) had said that whilst the lack of telemetry during EDL was irelevant to whether MPL worked or not it was important in getting MPL's sucessors down safely to Mars. The engineer told me that the reports recommendation that telemetry be transmitted during EDL had been mentioned at a Beagle 2 meeting but that weight restrictions had simply made this impossible. In any case there was no possibility of another £25 million being found for Beagle 3.

I think that the weight restrictions that led to both a lack of telemetry and a lack of stronger airbags was Beagle 2's greatest weakness. I think that if telemetry been available which had proved that Beagle 2's airbags had burst on landing then ESA would have had the confidence to launch Beagle 3 with stronger airbags, perhaps as part of the now cancelled Net Lander mission.

I think that MPL would also have been reflown earlier than this year if telemetry had made it more clear exactly what had gone wrong in 1999.

Does anyone know whether Odyssey or MRO was able to collect meaningful telemetry from Phoenix during EDL or did they fail to collect meaningful data much as Mars Express did?

[djellison]

Does anyone know whether Odyssey or MRO was able to collect meaningful telemetry from Phoenix during EDL or did they fail to collect meaningful data much as Mars Express did?

All three of them recorded 8k and 32kbps data all the way down to the ground.

Doug