Back in 2003, a full month before NASA’s Opportunity landed on Mars, the British probe Beagle-2 entered orbit as part of the Mars Express exploratory mission. The Beagle-2 was the first British probe to travel to Mars, and it carried a full array of scientific gear — but after successfully detaching from the Mars Express, it was never heard from again. Now, NASA has identified the probe on the surface of Mars, proving that it did touch down and hopefully shedding light on what went wrong with the mission.
A shoe-string budget
One of the most striking things about the Beagle-2 is that Britain financed it with a mixture of public and private funds. Total cost for the probe was $120M (the joint Mars Express Orbiter and Beagle-2 put together were €150 million). The Beagle-2 carried a pair of stereo cameras, a microscope with 6 micrometer resolution, a spectrometer, an X-ray spectrometer, a drill for collecting and processing rock samples, equipment for measuring atmospheric carbon and methane, and a Planetary Undersurface Tool (dubbed PLUTO). This “mole” was capable of moving across the ground at 20mm per second and was going to be used to collect subsurface soil samples for analysis. The entire assembly was powered by an array of solar panels.
When the probe failed to respond, the ESA held an inquiry and attempted to use the Mars Express orbiter to image the Beagle-2’s landing place, but were unable to resolve the probe at its intended landing site, Isidis Planitia.
Today, NASA announced that
painstaking observation with the later Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully located the Beagle-2. The reason the Mars Express couldn’t find its own probe is straightforward — the camera onboard the Mars Express is only capable of resolving images at roughly 10 meters or smaller. The MRO, in contrast, can resolve an image as small as three feet in diameter — which means the Beagle-2 was just within the resolution distance of the MRO.
The Beagle had landed
This new data shows that the Beagle-2 did land properly at Isidis Planitia, but that a secondary problem prevented the probe’s solar panels from opening properly. The MRO also captured what it believes to be the parachutes, deployed some distance from the spacecraft.
The best available images of the probe are below. Compared to the image at the top of the article, they appear to show that the probe properly deployed at least two solar panels, possibly more, but that something prevented it from completing the deployment process.
Unfortunately, the probe’s antenna could only deploy if all of the solar panels were properly deployed first, which means there’s no chance of recovering data from the Beagle-2, even if its electrical systems had survived more than a decade on the Martian surface. Still, it’s an important discovery and partial vindication for the British team, who now know that the lander landed in the proper area and with the appropriate orientation.
Mars, it should be noted, is a notoriously difficult planet to land on
or survey. Of the 38 missions sent to Mars, 19 of them have failed to reach the planet at all, with a number of others failing before achieving mission objectives. All told, two-thirds of the missions to Mars launched from NASA, the ESA, Russia, and
other nations have failed before completing their assigned tasks.