Beagle 2 was launched from the Russian Space Centre in Kazakhstan on the
2nd of June 2003, carried by the Mars Express and due to land on Mars
mid-Christmas Day.After a six month's mission, the European Space Agency's Mars Express went into
orbit around the Red Planet, while Beagle 2 glided down towards the
surface. Its
planned landing site being Isidis Planitia, a large and flat area believed to
have once been covered in water. Its mission; to look for evidence of life on
Mars, existing or from the past.
America and Russia have spent small fortunes on space craft destined for Mars
but only a few have succeeded in missions to land on the Martian surface and
transmit useful data back to Earth; most notably, two Viking Probes in the
1970's and the late 1990's Pathfinder. The USSR had the first real success with
Mars 3, despite its transmission being short-lived. Many countries are
becoming actively engaged in a latter day "Arms Race" of being the first to
confirm or disprove the existence of Life on Mars, and Britain is the latest
to join the race.
But rather strangely, Beagle 2 carried no actual life detection equipment;
scientists say that neither its organic detector nor isotopic analysis
instruments will be able to provide evidence of living organisms. Its main
aim is to look for evidence of water which is deemed to be a pre-requisite for
the existence of any possible lifeform, and to send back some pretty pictures
for the world's media to hook into.
It doesn't seem to be a lot for a 35 million GBP outlay which has caused those
involved in the project years of grief and struggle.
The sad ending for the project will be a great disappointment for Professor
Colin Pillinger of the Open University who has been the force behind the team
which got Beagle 2 as far as it did.
Despite the difficulties facing the Beagle 2 team in securing finance and
getting the project off the ground, the biggest challenge was in actually
putting the space craft down on the ground at the end of its six month, 250
million mile journey.
To land a space craft safely on the ground requires the deployment of parachutes
to slow its descent through the Martian atmosphere and an ingenious use of
inflatable balloons which will allow it to bounce on the surface before it
comes to rest. The system is designed like a car airbag in reverse,
cushioning the lander from shock, and slowly deflating to leave it safely on
the planet surface.
Unfortunately this is a risky business, and major redesign work was undertaken
after both parachutes and airbags for Beagle 2 failed at NASA's Plum Brook
testing facility. Even after the redesign there were still many questions as to
whether or not the parachutes or airbags would work, or even be effective.
As Beagle 2 hurtled towards the surface of Mars on Christmas Day, 2003, a
world which waited with baited breath got its answer; we don't know.
Nothing has been heard from Beagle 2 since its scheduled landing time, and
is considered by most to have been destroyed on impact. Scientists are trying to
keep their optimism and spirits up, saying there could be many reasons why there
has been no response, but the outlook is looking gloomy, and getting worse by
the hour.
It is possible that Beagle's antenna is pointing in the wrong direction, there
may be a mismatch in communications, and it may well have landed safely and
be undertaking its tasks as expected, even though we can't hear it. It has not
helped that Beagle 2 does not have transmitting equipment which allows it
to send information directly back to Earth, and must rely on transmitting its
data through the orbiting Mars Express, but this is a common approach used to
keep weight down.
On the other hand, Beagle 2 could now be a shattered and worthless piece of
junk at the bottom of a small crater. Whatever its actual status; it is "Missing
in Action", and the six year project looks like a damp squib, and an expensive
one at that.
It must be rather annoying for those behind the Mars Express project that
Beagle 2, and particularly its perceived failure, has taken the glory
away from their project, especially as Beagle 2 was a late bolt-on for the
planned mission.
Mars Express has itself been completely successful so far in its own right, and
represents an amazing achievement for European scientists and a great step
forward for the European space industry.
Pillinger's enthusiasm for Beagle 2 and his ability to sell the project was
the prime reasons that Britain even had a space craft heading towards
Mars, but in creating the hype that surrounded the venture he perhaps
unwittingly set himself up to be knocked down hard.
Many people believe that the Beagle 2 mission was over-hyped and complete
failure is nothing more than expected. Arguing that Beagle 2 was "Mobile",
even though it couldn't move, because it had a long robotic arm didn't convince
many.
The involvment of artist Damien Hirst and pop group Blur, creating the camera
calibration image and 'call sign' respectively, were sometimes seen as appealing
to the lowest common denominator in a somewhat desperate attempt to secure
publicity and funding.
Why, some people are wondering now, are the resources of Jodrell Bank and
eslewhere being committed to looking for a signal from Mars when the
Beagle 2 team told us that the lander has no ability to send
communications directly back to Earth ? A last-ditch attempt to salvage
something from a project which has gone nowhere, and has proved early
doubters right ?
Given that Pillinger admits that the radio communication systems were not
exhaustively tested before launch, it comes as no surprise perhaps that they
don't work when needed, and that many, in Britain at least, see the project
as having come to nothing, even though the main mission has actually been so
successful.
When you promise the Earth, or in this case Mars, there's a lot at stake when
you fail to deliver.
If there is life on Mars, Beagle 2 is now unlikely to tell us about it.
Even if Martians have scraped up yet another souvenir of garbage being hurled
at it from their nearest neighbour and are studying it with intensity.
We can only hope that if there is intelligent life out there, they realise
everything we are throwing at Mars is purely for scientific purposes, and we
must keep our fingers crossed that every space craft which smashes into
the surface does not create a 9-11 for any lifeform that may exist there.
The last thing we need to do is to accidentally declare war on a neighbouring
planet, whose residents may believe we are envious of their freedoms and
life-style and are seeking to destroy them with whatever Weapons of Mass
Destruction we can muster.
Who knows what an alien lifeform could throw back at us ? We tend to perceive
our alien neighbours to be as Hollywood chooses to portray them, but we have no
real idea what they might have in their armoury. Maybe they'll wage war on the
Earth using bacteriological weapons which we can't understand ? Evil nasty
viruses and organisms which could eat our brains away while we sleep ?
It would be a brave scientist who would dare suggest that the outbreaks of BSE
in the 1980's were a direct result of the Mars landings of the decade before.
Smoking Beagle Found On Mars. More News Later.
After much head scratching, but with little idea of the real truth, the
Beagle 2 Team have reluctantly had to admit that their hopes for the
mission are as broken as Beagle 2 itself probably is.
Scientists now believe that Beagle 2 did crash into the Martian surface
where it was destroyed, as a result of the atmosphere being somewhat thinner
than had been anticipated. With a thninner atmosphere than predicted and
designed for, Beagle 2's parachutes and airbags were unable to slow its
descent down, leaving it to hit Mars with enough force to completely destroy it.
Putting aside the fact that this plausible and likely explanation conveniently
puts aside the
failures which were experienced with both parachute and airbag designs during
development; throwing a space craft at a planet without any idea if it is going
to slow down and land gently or splat into the surface in a cloud of dust and
disintigrating electronics is the inter-galactic equivalent of diving head
first into a pool of water without having any idea as to how deep it is.
This is something which only a fool, idiot or reckless person would do, which
does make one question the professionalism of the entire Beagle 2 team and
those tasked with overseeing the project.
The Beagle 2 team took a gamble that "the pool" was deep enough, and
wagered 35 million GBP on the off-chance that it was. It wasn't, and they've
thrown all that money down the drain.
Of course, it wasn't actually their money they lost so negligently, but ours;
the British public's.
Few can understand why so much money was put into a project which had such a
minimal guarantee of success, relied entirely upon "unknowns" for success, and
had failed to demonstrate the capability for even landing successfully before
launch.
Beagle 2 is viewed as a pretty sad joke by many who were led
to believe that such good things would come from it. Instead it seems almost
certain that Beagle 2 lies bent and broken after its crash-landing. Iconic
of what "Great British Engineering" means to many these days.
The disasterous mission coupled with Pillinger's over-hyping and over-selling
of it has made the public and government reluctant to get behind similar
projects in the future. It hasn't put British space exploration back years;
it's stopped it dead in its tracks.
It has destroyed a lot of credibility in British engineering, the British space
industry and Britain as a whole. It has been catastrophic for the European Space
Agency whose own successful efforts have been overshadowed by the Beagle 2
fiasco. Beagle 2, Pillinger and British space efforts have become the butt
of numerous jokes, parodies and insults. Putting a space craft on Mars is not,
in retrospect, being viewed as a brave and spirited attempt to "boldy go", but
a half-baked, badly thought through scheme that would never get off the ground,
let alone fly, had that been in its design. In the one thing it was meant to do,
and had to do well - land on the Martian surface - it failed miserably.
There must be only a few members of the public who now, with hindsight, are
unable or unwilling to admit that it's a result which they saw coming. And they
are probably wondering why scientists, so better placed than they are in
analysing scenarios, undertaking risk assessments and peforming failure mode
analysis, were unable to see such an obvious risk in the whole plan and ensure
they designed around it.
In many ways it looks like Beagle 2 was thrown at Mars in the hope that it
would be, "all right on the night", but there was nothing substantial to make
anyone think that it would be. Pillinger's showmanship distracted everyone who
should have been keeping tabs on the project and reigning in unwarranted
and misplaced enthusiam from asking the one important question; is this
actually going to work ?
For those who had high hopes on Christmas Day, Beagle 2 is yet another
dream smashed, but perhaps nothing more than we have come to expect from British
ventures.
It is hard to remember what it is that made us call Britain "Great", that era
seems to be so many moons ago.
Thankfully, we still have amateurs who are pushing the boundaries of rocket
science and technology within the UK who are "keeping our hopes alive" in
the space race, but it's a shame that they can only dream of seeing just a
small fraction of the amount of money that was wasted on Beagle 2.
Poorly Managed, Under Funded and Not Properly Tested
A leaked copy of the European Space Agency investigation into the
Beagle 2 venture shovels heavy criticism upon the team behind it.
The Sunday Times reports, May 2004, that the ESA has judged the project
as, "poorly managed, inadequately funded and left itself too little time to
test landing systems"; with consequences that we are all too aware of.
ESA Director of Science, Professor David Southwood, is reported as having
said that Beagle 2 had been compromised by both a short timetable and
the overstretching of Pillinger, the project's leader, who was attempting to
raise money for the project while trying to also build the spacecraft.
Echoing the words of cynics who had their doubts about the project, Southwood,
rather depressingly reports, "Privately we saw this loss coming. Long before
launch I said I would never allow anything like this again".
The Beagle 2 project was obviously considered out of control by the ESA,
and its downfall far from unexpected. Having taken ESA's glory with it, we can
but expect a highly critical report when it is released to the public.
