The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
News Reports: Beagle 2 Landing Site Located?
Dec. 20, 2005 | 08:52 PST | 16:52 UTC
Late yesterday reports appeared on several British websites (e.g. BBC, The Times, The Register) that Beagle 2 chief scientist Colin Pillinger had announced that the crash site of Beagle 2 had been located. They state that Beagle 2 was found within a small crater, and suggest that Beagle 2 hit the crater upon landing. According to the Times: "They suggest that the probe was lost because of cruel luck as it touched down in one of the worst possible places for a soft and successful landing. Rather than dropping to the surface on a flat plain, it appears to have first struck the downslope of a small crater about 18.5m (60ft) in diameter, before crashing into its opposite wall, bouncing several times around the rim and eventually coming to rest at the bottom. Even if the gas bags that were meant to cushion its impact were fully inflated, and there is some evidence that they were not, their design would not have allowed them to protect the probe properly under these unlikely circumstances."
Here are the images that were posted with the story by the BBC (top) and the Times (bottom). The identification of Beagle 2's wreckage was performed by Guy Rennie, of Virtual Analytics, described by the Times as "an expert who once interpreted spy satellite images for the Royal Air Force." Annotated image of the putative Beagle 2 crash site (BBC)Beagle 2 chief scientist Colin Pillinger believes that this Mars Orbiter Camera image shows the wreckage of Beagle 2. The image has been inverted from the original (that is, it appears like a photo negative). Source Credit: Beagle 2 / MSSS / BBC |
Annotated image of the putative Beagle 2 crash site (The Times)Beagle 2 chief scientist Colin Pillinger believes that this Mars Orbiter Camera image shows the location of the Beagle 2 crash site. Credit: Beagle 2 / MSSS / The Times |
I was surprised to see no quotes from anybody from Malin Space Science Systems in any of these stories. I know that the folks at MSSS have been working very hard to locate all the Mars landers, successful and failed (here's a story I wrote about that search a few months ago).
And, in fact, a look at the MSSS website shows that they already looked at and eliminated this spot as a possible Beagle 2 landing site well over a year ago. Below are a couple of pictures from that search. I will be very curious to watch the news this week and find out whether Mike Malin has anything to say about these stories!Mars Orbiter Camera cPROTO image of the possible Beagle 2 landing siteThis Mars Orbiter Camera cPROTO image of a candidate Beagle 2 landing site was captured in April 2004 at a resolution of 0.5 meters per pixel. The candidate Beagle 2 site is actually a small, eroded meteor impact crater with a dark patch of sand on its northern floor. Full caption at MSSS Credit: NASA / JPL / Malin Space Science Systems |
Comparison of two MOC images of the possible Beagle 2 landing siteThe image on the left, at a resolution of 1.5 meters per pixel, was captured in early 2004. The dark spot with the bright center was identified as a possible Beagle 2 landing site. The image on the right is a detail from a cPROTO image captured in April 2004 at a much higher resolution, 0.5 meters per pixel. Based on this image, scientists concluded that the candidate landing site was just a small, eroded meteor impact crater with a dark patch of sand on its northern floor. Full caption at MSSS Credit: NASA / JPL / Malin Space Science Systems |
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