Professor's BEAGLE lost for 10 years FOUND ON MARS The long-lost, dustbin-lid sized British Mars lander Beagle 2 - whose fate had been unknown since it departed from its Mars Express mothership in orbit above the red planet on Christmas Day 2003 - seems likely to have been found at last. The UK Space Agency has scheduled a press briefing on the Beagle for Friday and is …
Made me think of the opening sequence of "The Martian Chronicles" (1980), where the camera pulls back to reveal the city just out of sight of Viking 1. Still haunts me, that image...
(about 2m 15s into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWen9WZhztU , and try not to be watching it 4 1/2 hours later)
But not enough to melt the frozen airbag enough for it to inflate.
This is a serious post. They reused the test article airbags because there was no money for actual flight ones (until it was too late to make them) and water vapour was still coming out of the things in dangerously high amounts when they had to be pulled out of the vacuum chambers and packed for launch.
Knowledgeable cow-orkers were predicting that the thing would crater even before the launcher left the tower, but the choices were "include the thing as is" or "launch with a block of lead replacing Beagle's mass". Delaying the launch was not an option.
I also heard on the side someone saying that you don't want to do that, but I can't tell you why. Nor can you have any data on it (International Trade in Arms Regulations). Just here it is, slightly used but no real data on performances, etc.
I wasn't close enough to know if others did get hints on how to use it, but having worked on other projects, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Far too often, they go and have an hour teleconference, and then come out of it saying that they can't tell you anything.
Let's face it: it was never a spacecraft in the first place. At best it was an attempt to test whether Mars has gravity too.
It most definitely was a spacecraft: it successfully travelled through space from Mars Express detachment to martian atmosphere entry, at which time it transitioned to "air"craft. Things had been going fine up until that point...
Probably for the same reason Hubble can't see the Apollo landing sites: hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.cat=topten&id=77.
"I wonder why, when the security services have satellite based cameras that can see what im eating for lunch these days, that cameras have not been deployed to Mars to watch the locals eating habits at Starbucks Mars"
Because the best spy satellite cameras are large and expensive, exceeding the mass and cost of Hubble (itself a civilian version of the 1970s US KH-11 Kennan spy satellite). Both of those points makes it hard to get them to Mars. Consider:
The HiRise imager of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is 65kg and $40 million. At launch, MRO totaled is 2180kg and $720 million. A pair of latest-generation KH-11s purchased on short notice when, say, Boeing is to busy screwing a pooch to build a KH-11 replacement seems to run $5 billion. Each one is 19,600kg, give or take. Not only would that be a record mass to send to Mars, the off-the-shelf price tag doesn't include Mars-specific instrumentation; the launcher; Mars-arrival braking systems (aerobraking and/or rockets); and ongoing operational costs.
What you get out of the delivery of such a behemoth to Mars is an increase from MRO's best 30-centimeter resolution to about 15 centimeters.
The idea is being considered, though. NRO generously donated a couple of "stubby Hubbles" to NASA in 2012. NASA's got schemes and plots for the first mysterious spare space telescope, but the second one has no funding allocation and is thus subject to wilder concepts - like being shipped to Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA
A live mars cam would be really cool. Probably not too far off, either. But for the record, the satellite photography NASA supplied for some regions of Google Mars is higher resolution than the aerial photography on most cities in Google Earth! Check it out, around Olympus Mons.
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And all easily paid for with virtually quite worthless printed paper bills/fiat currency supply and spend.
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With the world space market likely to grow to at least £400 billion by 2030, the UK needs to stay in the game and build on its growing success. Our investment at this ESA Ministerial is targeted towards a smart mix of commercial opportunity and inspiring exploration. This confirms the UK as the forward-looking and business-friendly ‘place for space’ - especially as many of the projects will fuel the burgeoning UK Space Gateway at Harwell, Oxford. ….. said Dr David Parker, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency. …… https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-space-industry-set-to-rocket-with-over-200-million-of-new-investment-for-europes-space-programme
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