Mars Orbiter Spots Beagle 2, European Lander Missing Since 2003

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON — It turns out the Beagle has landed after all — but it never called home.

The spacecraft’s fate had been a mystery since Dec. 25, 2003, when it was supposed to land on Mars and start transmitting data back to Earth.

Instead, the British-built craft went dark. After several months, it was declared lost — presumed to have been destroyed during its approach or while trying to land on the red planet.

On Friday, more than 11 years later, European Space Agency officials reported that the Beagle 2 had been found, thanks to extensive detective work based on new photos taken by the high-resolution camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The photos show that Beagle 2 landed safely on Mars and partly deployed — but was unable to fully deploy and start communicating.

Still, it was a vindication of sorts for space scientists who had wondered for more than a decade about the fate of their project, which was designed to search for signs of life on Mars.

Rudolf Schmidt, E.S.A.’s Mars Express project manager at the time, called the finding “excellent news.” He said that not knowing what happened to Beagle 2 had “remained a nagging worry.”

Since the 2003 disappearance of Beagle 2, American spacecraft have landed on Mars and sent back many pictures and extensive scientific data, providing the sort of information astronomers had been seeking when the first Mars probes began.

Yet Mars is a notoriously elusive target. The world’s overall success rate since the 1960s for Mars missions is less than 50-50.

NASA has attempted the most, 20 launches so far, and has the best success rate: 70 percent.

Russia, in second place with 18 Mars launches, has a dismal 14 percent success rate. China collaborated on one of the Russian flops. Europe and Japan have attempted one Martian mission each; the European Mars Express has had mixed results, while the Japanese effort fizzled.

Officials said careful analysis of the high-resolution photos showed the Beagle 2 had landed within its expected landing area in a basin close to the Martian equator. Signs of key entry and descent components were also spotted.

Identifying the craft was made more difficult by its small size — it is only about seven feet wide.

Experts who helped identify the lander at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Lab said the photographs are “consistent” with only a partial deployment of the Beagle 2 upon landing.

They said a failure to fully deploy would explain why no data or signal from the craft was ever received, since a complete deployment of all of its solar panels would have been needed for successful transmission.

Alfred McEwen, chief investigator of the project, said the special camera had been used to search for all of the landers that have tried to descend to the surface of Mars.

“This the first time we found one that didn’t send a signal after it landed,” he said. “If the landing sequence works correctly, the probe sends a radio signal, and you can use that to pinpoint where it is coming from, even if it broadcasts only very briefly. But in the case of Beagle 2, we didn’t get anything. All we had to go by was the target landing area.”

Experts who worked on the project said the Beagle 2 mission can now be classified a partial success — even if it never provided information about possible life on Mars.

The United Kingdom Space Agency chief executive, David Parker, said the discovery of the craft showed its complex landing procedures had worked.

“This finding makes the case that Beagle 2 was more of a success than we previously knew and undoubtedly an important step in Europe’s continuing exploration of Mars,” he said.

The Beagle 2 was launched on E.S.A.’s Mars Express orbiter. It was released from its mother ship on Dec. 19, 2003, and was supposed to land six days later, but no communications with the lander were ever established.

Professor Mark Sims of the University of Leicester, who worked on the project, said the new information showed the team came extremely close to its goal of getting data from Mars, with the deployment failing only in its final stage.

“To be frank, I had all but given up hope of ever knowing what happened to Beagle 2,” he said, admitting he was troubled every Christmas Day by the unknown fate of the craft.

消失多年小獵犬2號 火星表面現蹤

英國太空總署（UK Space Agency）今天表示，10多年前消失無蹤的英國打造的太空探測器，已在火星表面現蹤。

英國太空總署發表聲明說，小獵犬2號（Beagle 2）登陸艇「被發現部分部署在火星表面，終結了這項任務到底發生什麼事的謎團」。

英國太空總署說：「這項發現顯示，小獵犬2號的進入、下降與登陸程序奏效，小獵犬2號於2003年耶誕節成功著陸。」

英國太空總署表示，美國國家航空暨太空總署（NASA）火星勘測號軌道太空船（Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter）拍到的衛星影像，有此消失登陸艇的「明確證據」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/space/missing-lander-beagle-2-finally-located-on-mars.html

2015-01-16 20:43:10聯合新聞網．即時新聞．國際．中央社 倫敦16日綜合外電報導