The Martians are at it again

Gauracandra · December 30, 2003

I read (I wished I saved where) that something like 20 out of 30 missions to send survelience machines to Mars have disappeared. Here is the latest one. The European Space Agency launched a vehicle to monitor Mars and now has gone missing. Personally I think the aliens are abducting the space probes /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Crater theory over missing Beagle

LONDON, England (AP) -- Scientists have ruled out two possible explanations for their inability to pick up signals from Europe's Beagle 2 Mars probe and discovered another -- a large crater where the vessel was supposed to land.

The European team has received no transmissions from the craft, which was supposed to touch down on the distant planet on Christmas Day to begin its search for Martian life.

NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey has passed five times over the spot where scientists hope Beagle landed, without picking up a signal. The latest attempt, between 0741 and 0901 GMT Monday, failed to pick up a bark from Beagle.

Chief Beagle scientist Colin Pillinger said at a news conference that the team had received a new, detailed picture of the area where they believe the Beagle landed.

While they cannot make out the ship itself, the image shows a 1 km (0.62 mile) wide crater at the center of the 70 by 10 km (43.5 by 6 mile) target area near the Martian equator, Pillinger said. It is possible, although unlikely, that the Beagle may be unable to communicate because it landed in the crater, he said.

"This would be an incredibly unlucky situation," he said.

Scientists have ruled out two other possible causes for the failure, mission manager Mark Sims said. Neither the Martian weather nor trouble with the hardware of the Beagle's clock appeared to be the source of the problem, he said.

The vessel is programmed to transmit its signal when its orbiter or telescopes on earth are in position to receive it. If the clock had been damaged, the Beagle could have been "talking" and staying quiet at the wrong times.

Sims said a problem with the clock's software was still possible. The team planned to send the clock a reset command Wednesday.

Lord Sainsbury, Britain's science minister, said the government remained committed to unmanned space exploration and did not consider the mission a failure.

"We've always recognized that Beagle 2 was a high risk project," he said. "We must in future resist the temptation only to do low-risk projects. ... Long term, we need to be working with the European Space Agency to ensure that in some form there is a Beagle 3."

Scientists at Britain's National Space Center in central England are studying a functioning scale model of Beagle to work out what might have gone wrong.

"They are keeping up their spirits," said Peter Barratt, spokesman for the British government's physics and astronomy research agency.

Project leaders say the Beagle's mother ship, Mars Express, will offer the best hope of contacting the probe when its enters a lower orbit of the planet on Jan. 4.

"That was always the prime chance for communication," Barratt said. "But if we get negative responses after a few tries, we will start to become concerned."

Mars Express, which carried Beagle into space and set it free more than a week ago, is currently orbiting the planet as high as 188,000 kilometers (117,00 miles) above its equator.

On Tuesday, European Space Agency scientists at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, will fire Mars Express' engine in an attempt to shift its orbit. They hope to move it over one of the Martian poles -- necessary for it to survey the entire planet with its high-resolution camera and a powerful radar that can look for underground water.

Scientists hope to gradually reduce the polar orbit and say that by Jan. 4, it should pass as low as 200-250 kilometers (125-155 miles) above the surface, enabling it to take close-up pictures and listen for Beagle.

Britain's powerful radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory struck out again early Monday after sweeping the planet's surface for the craft's distinctive call sign, composed by the British band Blur.

The 67-kilogram (143-pound) probe, which has a robotic arm to take soil and rock samples, was supposed to unfold its solar panels and transmit a signal confirming its arrival within hours of landing.

An "analysis and recovery think tank" at Britain's space center is working on possible scenarios to explain why it has failed to make contact.

Even if Beagle fails to transmit its call sign, team member Alan Wells said in a statement that the sensitive radio telescope at Stanford University in California, which has joined the hunt, could scan the surface for low levels of radiation emitted by the probe.

Getting a working spacecraft to Mars has proven frustratingly difficult. Several vehicles, most recently NASA's 1999 Mars Polar Lander, have been lost on landing. The Soviet Mars-3 lander touched down safely in 1971 but failed after sending data for only 20 seconds.