No Signal From Beagle
 

PARIS -- A super-sensitive British radio telescope failed to pick up a signal from the Beagle-2 Mars lander tonight, deepening fears that the robot designed to look for life may have surrendered its own before setting to work.

Ground teams will make another attempt Friday at picking up Beagle-2 signals at 1:15 p.m. EST (1815 GMT) when NASA's Odyssey satellite orbiting Mars overflies what is thought to be Beagle-2's landing zone.

A first pass by Odyssey early Thursday morning also came up with no Beagle-2 signals.

Beagle-2 managers had brushed off the first Odyssey disappointment as relatively inconsequential. The satellite, they said, may simply have missed Beagle-2 during its 20-minute overflight, or the lander's transmit antenna may have been pointed away from Odyssey.

But tonight's failure of the 76-meter-diameter Lovell Telescope at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory to capture a Beagle-2 signal is another matter.

"I wasn't too worried about the missed link with Odyssey, but it starts getting serious if Jodrell Bank cannot get a signal either," said one mission nanager. "But you never want to give up hope."

Beagle-2 is thought to have entered Mars' atmosphere shortly before 10 p.m. EST Wednesday (0300 GMT Thursday).

It was designed to deploy a series of parachutes, jettison its heat shield and then inflate several air bags before bouncing to a stop on an area near Mars' equator. The air bags would then be cut off, freeing Beagle-2 to flip itself open, pocket-watch style, and send a signal to Odyssey.

Flight managers of Europe's Mars Express satellite, which successfully entered Mars orbit today after releasing Beagle-2 on Dec. 19, said they had narrowed Beagle-2's likely landing area to an ellipse just 30 kilometers wide and 5 kilometers long in an area called Isidis Planita.

Beagle-2 would have only a few hours to deploy its solar arrays and pick up badly needed power for its batteries before settling in for a frigid Martian night. Sunrise on Mars today was at 8 p.m. GMT.

Beagle-2 program designer Colin Pillinger, of Britain's Open University, had repeatedly said the signal from Beagle-2 that it had survived the night with its batteries functioning would be the first proof that the lander would embark on its mission.

Jodrell Bank's Lovell Telescope had been specially fitted with filters to reduce the noise from terrestrial sources, the better to concentrate on a signal from Beagle-2's miniscule 5-watt transmitter, a simple beep-beep sound that has been described as similar to Morse code.

"We're just basically waiting on a phone call," Beagle-2 project spokesman Peter Barratt said in a telephone interview, referring to word from the Lovell Telescope's operators that they had picked up Beagle-2 transmissions.
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Thhis sucks nuts for money, people who work on these projects spend enormous amounts of time on them, and then It all goes to waste, I just hope they recieve a signal.

Bloody British project. Probably bought the batteries, (10 for £1) from the dodgy geezer in Brick Lane market.

It just sucks.

a bit harsh. typical british engineering though ;)

You blokes shoulda had Mississippians on the project.

The airbags weren't 2nd generation and broke upon landing.

That is too bad. It would have been cool if it had found something interesting.

How much did it cost the British?

At least somebody's exploring. Our own space program's devoted to weapons and telecommunication, which may be practical but don't bring us any nearer to understanding.

Thats not all true. NASA's funding took a backseat the past decade or so with budgets that allowed small projects to be done, and essentially worsened to the point that corners were cut and mission failures started occuring.

It is the Military that is funding weapons research, and building them comes from Lockheed Martin and other companies. Theres a huge missile range test site in my state. They use it just peachy.

Telecommunication research is one of the biggest frontiers. Without better and efficient technology, there is no possibility to advance science and information at the exponential pace we are right now.

The US needs to start a new research project, just think of all the crap that was invented for the space program that people use in their daily lives, like velcro.

Or the battery operated drill.

and have it made of canes and string? ;)

Its sad.

You guys forget the US had two Mars projects that were lost.

I think that the fact we got the damn thing into space and in orbit around Mars was a bloody achievement in its self. Now, I'm not the most patriotic person, but, damn it, Europe can't afford manned space flight etc, so we will become world leaders in unmanned space exploration.

Do it, Europe. We'll try and join you when we get things sorted out over here. It may take a while...

We're trying, Pentorqueloo, we're trying....we have another 2 or 3 of these little fellas already to go. Next year Huygens will head out to Saturn's moon, Titan and Rosetta will land on a comet.

In my opinion, manned space flight is far to expensive a venture, we can do better and cheaper science with probes. Manned space flight is glamorous, certainly, but largely redundant. Low level launches of manned ships to repair satellites are possibly the only worthwhile manned flights at the moment.

This is all opinion and open to debate, but there you go.

European Space Agency

They're now saying that Beagle is in a crater and this is casuing the communication problems. Mars Express is due over the area in the next few days.

LONDON (AP) -- Scientists trying to find Europe's Beagle 2 Mars probe ruled out weather problems and a faulty onboard clock for its five-day silence, but considered a new possibility Monday -- a crater that may be blocking its signal.

A new, detailed picture of the area of Mars where the Beagle 2 is believed to have landed revealed a crater a little more than a half-mile wide. It is possible -- although unlikely -- that the Beagle may be unable to communicate because it landed inside, chief Beagle scientist Colin Pillinger said at a news conference.

``This would be an incredibly unlucky situation,'' Pillinger said.

Several attempts to contact the Beagle 2 so far have failed five days after it was to descend to Mars. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has passed four times over the spot where scientists hope Beagle landed, without picking up a signal. Pillinger did not reveal the results of another overflight that happened at 2:40 a.m. EST on Monday, while he was speaking.

A British radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory struck out again early Monday after sweeping the planet's surface for the craft's call sign, composed by the British band Blur.

The 143-pound probe, which has a robotic arm to take soil and rock samples, was supposed to unfold its solar panels and transmit a signal confirming its arrival within hours of landing on Christmas Day. An ``analysis and recovery think tank'' at Britain's space center considered several reasons for its silence.

They discounted two possible theories. One was that the weather may have played a role, and the other was that the lander's internal clock wasn't working, mission manager Mark Sims said.

The vessel is programmed to transmit its signal when its orbiter or telescopes on earth are in position to receive it. If the clock had been damaged, the Beagle could have been ``talking'' and staying quiet at the wrong times.

Sims said, however, a problem with the clock's software was still possible. The team planned to send the clock a reset command Wednesday.

The European Space Agency will get a better idea about the Beagle 2 when the its mother ship, Mars Express, enters a lower orbit around Mars and tries to contact it on Jan. 4. Mars Express, which carried Beagle into space, is orbiting the planet as high as 117,00 miles above its equator.

``They are keeping up their spirits,'' Peter Barratt, spokesman for the British government's physics and astronomy research agency, said Sunday. ``The big crunch will be when Mars Express comes into the frame. That was always the prime chance for communication. But if we get negative responses after a few tries, we will start to become concerned.''

On Tuesday, European Space Agency scientists at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, will fire Mars Express' engine to shift its orbit. They hope to move it over one of the Martian poles -- where it will survey the entire planet with its high-resolution camera and a radar that can look for underground water.

Scientists hope to gradually reduce the polar orbit and say that by Jan. 4, it should pass as low as 125-155 miles above the surface, enabling it to take close-up pictures and listen for Beagle.

If the Beagle fails to transmit its call sign, Wells said a radio telescope at Stanford University in California could help determine if it survived the descent to Mars. It would scan the planet's surface for low levels of radiation emitted by the probe.

Efforts to get a lander on Mars have proven difficult. Of 34 unmanned American, Soviet and Russian missions to Mars since 1960, two-thirds have ended in failure. Beagle 2 would be only the fourth successful Mars landing if all goes well.