The Beagle 2 mission to Mars is almost certainly dead. A last-ditch attempt to contact the probe by the lander鈥檚 mothership turned up nothing on Wednesday.
The mothership, Europe鈥檚 Mars Express orbiter, made its first pass over Beagle 2鈥檚 landing site at about 1215 GMT. 快猫短视频s hoped the orbiter might hear signals from the lander, despite the failure of NASA鈥檚 Mars Odyssey orbiter and the 76-metre Jodrell Bank radio dish in the UK to hear any communications after Beagle 2鈥檚 arrival at Mars on Christmas Day.
But at about 1500 GMT, David Southwood, head of science at the European Space Agency, announced bad news at a press conference in Darmstadt, Germany.
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鈥淲e did not get any content of a signal or indeed a signal from the surface of Mars,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 have to say this is a setback and it makes me feel really very sad.鈥�
Final whistle
The result means very little hope remains for the mission. However, the team of British scientists behind Beagle 2 is adamant that it will not give up until mid-February, when Mars Express will have had several more chances to make contact.
鈥淲e will play to the final whistle 鈥� it only takes a fraction of a second to score a goal,鈥� said Colin Pillinger, Beagle 2 head scientist, at a news conference in London. However, he admits that in around 10 days from now, it will be 鈥渨ell into the last minutes of extra time鈥�.
There are many possible reasons for the lander鈥檚 failure. The solar panels that charge its battery may have failed to unfold following the landing, or it might have fallen into a crater or a shadow where it couldn鈥檛 power up.
But some experts think it is more likely that Beagle 2 either burned up in the Martian atmosphere or crash landed and broke into pieces because the systems designed for a soft landing, including parachutes and airbags, failed.
鈥淢y bet is that during the landing phase, one of the steps did not go as planned,鈥� says Max Meerman, an engineer with UK company Surrey Satellites, currently on sabbatical at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Stress fractures
Meerman adds that another potential problem was the sterilisation procedures used on Beagle 2. Some components were heated to more than 100掳C to prevent contamination of the Martian surface with terrestrial microbes.
This process could have introduced tiny stress fractures. 鈥淪ome of these may not have shown up during tests, but after the launching, cruise and landing stresses, they may well have failed,鈥� says Meerman.
As well as continuing attempts to make contact with Beagle 2, scientists will also use the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and Mars Express to photograph the landing site in hope of glimpsing the lander and its parachutes. Although this would not improve prospects for reviving the mission, it would at least put the mission leaders out of their misery by helping explain why Beagle 2 died.
Meanwhile, Mars Express is performing exactly as planned. Southwood said the two drastically different outcomes for Beagle 2 and its mothership are making the mission 鈥渁 very bitter-sweet experience鈥�.