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Science

Fingers Crossed for Beagle 284

Posted by CmdrTaco from the here's-hoping dept.
Adam_Trask writes "Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers. Beagle 2 has been carried to the vicinity of Mars by the Mars Express mothership, and released successfully to go its own way for the final leg of the journey."
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Fingers Crossed for Beagle More

Fingers Crossed for Beagle

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  • I knew Snoopy would made it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hanul ( 533254 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:27AM (#7794523) Homepage
    .. as a WWI veteran flying on his doghouse to Mars.

  • Xmas Presents (Score:5, Interesting)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:28AM (#7794536)
    I personally think this must be one of the nicest Xmas presents in a while. And hopefully this one won't go awry and actually produce the results everyone in the community hopes for.

    Anyone else thinking about 'London, The Beagle has landed'..

    Mad.

    • Re:Xmas Presents (Score:5, Informative)

      by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:42AM (#7794643) Homepage
      That would be 'Leicester, the Beagle has landed' - the whole thing [beagle2.com] is being controlled from the National Space Centre [nssc.co.uk] in Leicester, where you can actually go and watch the control centre in action.

      Although actually it's going to announce itself by playing a tune by Blur, as well as using a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the cameras.

  • First images back from the Martian surface (Score:5, Funny)

    by xenoweeno ( 246136 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:29AM (#7794538)
    Available here [dragg.net].

  • The Beagle (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:29AM (#7794541) Journal
    This is Tranquility Base...the Beagle has landed!

  • Nitpicking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geeber ( 520231 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:29AM (#7794546)
    Adam_Trask didn't write that summary. Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online science editor did, and Adam_Trask just lifted the sentences out of the article. Shouldn't the poster make that clear?

  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The One KEA ( 707661 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:29AM (#7794549) Journal
    If this probe does manage to survive, then it will be a testament to the skill and abilities of the engineers and managers who helped build it. Hopefully, its success will inspire the bean counters to be a little freer in their funding in the future ;)

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by capt.Hij ( 318203 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:34AM (#7794589) Homepage Journal
      If it succeeds then this will be taken as an affirmation that cheaper can work. Unfortunately, some will think of it as cheaper is better.

      • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

        by digitalsushi ( 137809 ) *
        cheaper IS better. more sponsors will get interested as it becomes more realistic to be involved. lots of little projects guarentee more successes than single large projects. its like raiding your drives, or not putting all your eggs in one basket.

        • Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

          by JWW ( 79176 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @03:58PM (#7797056)
          No better is better.

          When you say cheaper is better the first thing that pops into my head in this case is....

          "This week on Junkyard Wars, we'll give TWO teams TEN hours to see if they can bodge together a Martian Probe!!"

  • Weird design, hope it works (Score:4, Funny)

    by Stalke ( 20083 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:32AM (#7794578)
    "When Beagle gets to the surface its power is almost spent and it must immediately open up and expose its solar panels to the sunlight to charge its batteries and run its systems. Too much of a delay and it will die."

    Sounds sortoff like the ipod. After a year in space the battery doesn't hold much of a charge.

    "Beagle survives on the energy from its solar panels and has no way to clean them if they get dirty because of, say, a dust storm."

    Havn't they considering using windshield wipers. They come as standard equipment on all cars but I guess on space probes they are an optional extra that wasn't purchased :)

  • airbags (Score:4, Funny)

    by kjba ( 679108 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:33AM (#7794583)
    ...and they must protect Beagle for up to 12 bounces

    How long before we can expect such technology in our cars? Such cars would just bounce back in a collision. Not to mention the potentials for bouncing airplanes!

  • If you want to know more about Mars (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gavin Scott ( 15916 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:34AM (#7794593)
    Perhaps the best science book I've ever read is A Traveler's Guide to Mars [amazon.com]. This book is full of the latest imagery from various mapping missions, and the author (well known planetary scientist William K. Hartmann) tells you, in clear enjoyable prose, basically everything we know about Mars and how it has been figured out. It turns out that Mars is way more interesting (and wet) than you probably expect. If you plan on following the Beagle 2 mission and the two NASA rovers that follow next month, then this is the book to have.

    G.
    • If you do not want to limit yourself to just a measely little red planet hoever, you might want to pick up this book [ebay.com], often considered the definitive work on the universe.

      Dr. Adams may well be most remembered for this work detailing not only travel through the universe in the heart of gold, but also covers travel through time also. There are lessons within this excellent tome that could even help you fly without the assistance of any mechanical devices. This is a must have book especially if you have eve

  • Oh boy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kenneth Stephen ( 1950 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:35AM (#7794595) Journal
    Then there are the airbags. If anything goes wrong the engineers suspect it will be them. They failed their first tests and had to be designed and built without a full testing regime.

    The bags werent fully tested? Havent they heard of Murphy's law?
    • Reading the article they seem to rely an awfull lot on luck. Nose cone, parachutes, airbags, batteries, solar panels. They better buy some lottery tickets cause if this thing makes it they will all win the jackpot.

      Oh well. At least they dare to do the impossible. Lets hope it doesn't land on some martians head.

      • Re:No kidding (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Moofie ( 22272 )
        The thing is, I can almost reconstruct what the engineers actually told this journalist from his overwrought, overdramatized story.

        The people who built this thing are smarter and more numerous than the person who's telling us about it. Keep that in mind.
    • I guess they have. That's why they think that if anything goes wrong, it will likely be those. :-)

    • Re:Oh boy (Score:2, Informative)

      by Bill_Mische ( 253534 )
      Better yet, they filmed it for BBC2. We saw the bugger fail first time round. But in the end it had to go on time or not go at all.

  • a bit gloomy and doomy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jason0000042 ( 656126 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:36AM (#7794603) Homepage
    The article is full of gloom and doom. It makes it sound like there's no chance at all that it will succeed. I hope it's not as bad as all that. I think they're just trying to keep everybody's hopes from getting too high. Well, my hopes are high anyway. And whatever happens, watching this story unfold will be much more fun than watching some stupid parade with giant inflatable balloon cartoons.

  • manufacturer (Score:5, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:36AM (#7794604) Journal
    Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers.

    I didn't know Ford made spacecraft!

  • Refreshing pessimism (or objectivity?) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Delirium Tremens ( 214596 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:38AM (#7794614) Journal
    It's refreshing to read some space odyssee report that is not full of state propaganda and overblown optimism. After reading the article, I felt like that we were probably going to lose Beagle, but also, I actually felt really excited about the mission. I care. Good journalism and insider reporting! Thank you, BBC.

  • Atmosphere issues (Score:4, Insightful)

    by manganese4 ( 726568 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:39AM (#7794625)
    I would assume the difference between entering a nitrogen atmosphere vs a carbon dioxide atmosphere is the larger heat capacity of CO2? Alternatively, it could be a result of greater drag due to the larger mass of CO2 and the ability of CO2 to deform more readily than N2 and thus increasing its effective coefficient of friction.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 955301 ( 209856 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:40AM (#7794634) Journal
    Anyone else getting tripped up by the author's choice of referring to the nose cone as one word?

    nose cone
    nosecone.
    nosecone?
    WTF?
    no secone? No Habla!
    nosec one?
    Oh! Nose cone! Sheesh!
    • I needed the picture to figure it out. Getting old I guess. Damn kid journalists making up new words. Why when I was there age we had only 1 word and we liked it.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 )
      You'd have trouble adapting to Sweden and other countries like Germany. :-) Where we always write two words as one, and it's even considered bad practice to separate them. The reason is because of problems like this:

      "ice cream" vs "icecream". Here, "ice cream" (written in swedish) would mean "some cream made of ice" literally, while "icecream" would be a completely different word meaning, well:

      A smooth, sweet, cold food prepared from a frozen mixture of milk products and flavorings.

      I.e. what you probably
    • He's English. At least he didn't call it the 'bonnet'.

      Jolly good, old chap indeed.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

        by dotwaffle ( 610149 )
        Is there an American English (British?) dictionary? I'm inclined to start one...

        Bonnet = Hood
        Boot = Trunk
        Fag = Cigarette
        Big Gay [insert name] = Fag
        Chippy = Fish and Chip Emporium (Nobody says Emporium, I just like the word...)

        Great Britain is England, Wales, Scotland

        United Kingdom != England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland (not Eire!)

        Oh, and we don't like the French, if you hadn't noticed. France is nice. The French aren't.
    • It's one word.

      It's spoken as one word.

      Put a hyphen there and it looks out of place.

  • Beagle 2? (Score:4, Funny)

    by SeXy_Red ( 550409 ) <Meviper85.hotmail@com> on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:46AM (#7794668)
    Can we call him snoopy?

    It gets energized by laying in the sun, just like the dog in the comic, so I think its a good match.

  • Art and Music (Score:4, Interesting)

    by boatboy ( 549643 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:46AM (#7794669) Homepage
    As an artist, I'm especially interested in the artistic ambitions [beagle2.com] of the Beagle 2 mission. They plan to play a song by Blur for the Martians and use a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the spectrometers. Seems to be a well-rounded adventure.

  • Curse you, Red Planet! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:46AM (#7794671)
    Oh wait, that was another flying beagle.

  • Merely the beginning (Score:4, Informative)

    by mhw25 ( 590290 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:48AM (#7794686)
    Lets not forget the Beagle/Mars Express is only the first of a trio of spacecraft to Mars this year. Look at JPL: Where are Spirit and Opportunity right now [nasa.gov] and you can see how close the spacecrafts of the Terran armada is together. A golden opportunity for science if all of them make it.

    In terms of expectations/cost factor the Beagle/Mars Express is perhaps the most ambitious one, therefore the high emphasis on what could go wrong in the Beeb article. A kind of be hopeful but keep your fingers crossed thingy.

  • Beagle? (Score:3, Funny)

    by CompWerks ( 684874 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:48AM (#7794693)
    The name beagle doesn't exactly inspire much confidence.
    Pit Bull, Bull Dog or Rodesian Ridgeback would have had a better chance of surviving.

  • Beagel 2 unlikely to boast future british missions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flyingdisc ( 598575 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:49AM (#7794695)
    If beagel makes it and returns data it will be a fantastic achievement. To event attempt to do this on this budget is staggering. In real contrast to NASA and even ESA space missions. If it works there is alot to be proud of.

    It's unlikely to do much to boast the british space industry. There is little space funding outside british funding of ESA and ESA only contracts out to companies/universities for an equivalent sum as that nation put in. There doesn't look like the UK is prepared to change it's space funding arrangements (too much of research funding is tied up on the ground based observatory stuff) and so the british space industry is unlikely to benifit. This coupled with the increased protectionism in NASA will limit any boast British space projects might get.

  • More news on ESA Mars efforts (Score:5, Informative)

    by zzabur ( 611866 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:04PM (#7794815)
    ESA is also planning long term Aurora programme for eventual manned mission to Mars.

    Aurora roadmap:

    • 2007 - an entry vehicle demonstrator mission to validate and demonstrate high-speed re-entry technology
    • 2009 - ExoMars, an exobiology mission to send a rover to Mars in order to search for traces of life - past or present - and characterise the nature of the surface environment.
    • 2011 / 2014 - Mars sample return, a split mission to bring back to Earth the first samples of Martian material
    • 2014 - Human mission technologies demonstrator(s) to validate technologies for orbital assembly and docking, life support and human habitation
    • 2018 - a technology precursor mission to demonstrate aerobraking/aerocapture, solar electric propulsion and soft landing (formerly envisaged as a smaller Arrow-class mission to be launched in 2010)
    • 2024 - a human mission to the Moon to demonstrate key life support and habitation technologies, as well as aspects of crew performance and adaptation and in situ resources utilisation technologies
    • 2026 - an automatic mission to Mars to test the main phases of a human mission to Mars
    • 2030 / 2033 - a split mission that will culminate in the first human landing on Mars

    More information: ESA [esa.int] or Spacedaily [spacedaily.com].

  • ...without having to nip back to the lab for a cigarette.

  • Against all odds (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bram Stolk ( 24781 )
    If I'm to believe the article, then all odds
    are against a successful mission. Why not lower
    the objectives a little, and pass on the landing
    attempt?

    The article makes it appear to be a doomed
    mission.

    • Re:Against all odds (Score:2, Interesting)

      by PhuCknuT ( 1703 )
      The mission is in 2 parts, the lander is actually the smaller of them. The orbiter will happily continue its mission if the lander is lost.

  • Weight Loss (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quill_28 ( 553921 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:27PM (#7795022) Journal
    How much weight would have to be launched into space before it has a noticeable effect on earth?
    Are there any theories on this?

    • Re:Weight Loss (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tiled_rainbows ( 686195 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:37PM (#7795119) Homepage Journal
      I don't think we have to worry about this. Two reasons:

      1. The Earth is really big. Like, really really big.
      2. Tonnes and tonnes of stuff is falling to Earth every day in the form of meteors etc., adding to the overall weight of the earth. Even if they burn up it re-entry, the remaining dust and gases or whatever have still got to weigh the same as the original rock.

      If you're looking for stuff like that to worry about, worry that low-Earth orbit is getting too cluttered, and that one day there might be what the Scottish Sci-Fi author Ken Macleod called an ablation cascade in his book The Sky Road.

      An ablation cascade is when a small-ish collision in orbit results n a whole bunch of high-speed fragments flying off and causing secondary collisions, and the whole thing spiralling off into a domino-rally-type exponentially-increasing SNAFU, until the Earth is surrounded by deadly high-speed fragments of metal meaning that we can't leave the planet for hundreds and hundreds of years.
      now that's scary.

  • Dupe? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Orne ( 144925 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:51PM (#7795248) Homepage
    Timothy approved a much more informative summary article Yesterday, in the Science section, here [slashdot.org], detailing all the issues encountered before landing.

  • Christmas press conference from 10 Downing (Score:3, Funny)

    by deathofcats ( 710348 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @01:54PM (#7795803) Homepage
    Tony Blair: "I have extremely good news to report from Mars this afternoon. Our probe to Mars has found Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction."

  • *eye roll* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @08:27PM (#7799578)
    "Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers."

    Never has Churchill been so abused by such poor parodies.

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