[meteorite-list] Wreckage of Beagle 2 Found on Mars?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Dec 20 16:16:46 2005
Message-ID: <200512202115.jBKLF5f20273_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8494-wreckage-of-beagle-2-found-on-mars.html

Wreckage of Beagle 2 found on Mars
Maggie McKee
New Scientist
20 December 2005

Two years after it was last seen shooting towards Mars, the
British-built Beagle 2 lander may have been spotted in images taken from
a NASA orbiter. They suggest the lander crashed on the wall of a small
crater and now lies broken at its centre, with its air bags splayed open
around it.

The clam-shaped lander was last seen when it was released from the
European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft on 19 December 2003. But
no signals were received after its scheduled landing time and team
members were unable to find it in orbital images of its predicted
landing site.

However, about five weeks ago, the team began to reanalyse images of the
140-square-kilometre landing site region taken by NASA's Mars Global
Surveyor orbiter. Now, they think they have found the lander, in a
19-metre-wide crater that lies on the flank of a larger crater.

On the northern wall of the small crater, they see a dark spot they
attribute to the lander's first impact. Spreading away from the spot are
two streaks of debris, bolstering the case for an impact. Then, there
are signs of a "disturbed" surface along the side of the crater, where
the lander might have bounced, finally coming to rest at the bottom of
the crater.

Panels like petals

The team says three symmetrical features visible there may be the
lander's air bags, with one of the features possibly being the lander
itself. Nearby, four nearly circular features might also be the lander,
with its solar panels opened like petals.

"It really does stand out like a sore thumb once you know what you're
looking at," says Colin Pillinger, head of the Beagle 2 team.

"We have an impact point and we have features inside the crater that you
should have, and there's nothing else like it in the 140 square
kilometres of imagery I've studied in detail," says Guy Rennie, an image
analyst at the consulting firm Virtual Analytics in Hertfordshire, UK.
"We can't say with 100% certainty this is Beagle 2, but we are very,
very close to that."

The team acknowledges that other scientists have questioned their
conclusion, arguing the features might be merely image artefacts or
noise. Recently, scientists using Mars Global Surveyor images had to
retract a claim that they had found NASA's lost Mars Polar Lander after
what they thought was the lander's parachute was revealed to be only a
sunlit hill.

No trick of the light

Pillinger admits the features are at the limits of the orbiter's
resolution - it can resolve objects about 50 centimetres across, but
says "this is not a trick of the light". He emphasises the features
persist in images taken six weeks apart and says the symmetrical nature
of the features argues against their being noise. "I don't believe in
that much of a coincidence," he told New Scientist.

The apparent impact point offers a clue as to what doomed Beagle 2. The
probe was designed to land on a horizontal surface, so if it hit the
sloped wall of the crater, it would have been particularly vulnerable to
damage, says Rennie. The impact could have ruptured the air bags and
damaged electrical components, then the battered probe was further
damaged as it skidded to a halt.

"It could be down to a real, cruel twist of fate," Rennie told New
Scientist. "If Beagle had landed even one metre further north, it
probably wouldn't have died. Assuming this is Beagle, it was very, very
unlucky."

Final confirmation will probably come with a more powerful camera
onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is now en route to the
Red Planet.
Received on Tue 20 Dec 2005 04:15:04 PM PST