The British space probe Beagle 2, which was as lost for more than a decade, was spotted on Mars for NASA satellite, announced Friday the space agency of the United Kingdom.
Beagle-2 “was found partially deployed on the surface of the planet, wiping out the mystery of what happened to the mission for more than a decade,” the agency said in a statement.
The finding shows that ” the sequence of entry, descent and landing of Beagle 2 probe worked and successfully landed on Mars on Christmas Day 2003, “the agency added this ship named after the ship ‘Beagle’ with which the father of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, did their research.
The ship needed to be fully deployed after landing to start sending data back to Earth. “Unfortunately, given the partial deployment,” lamented the agency, “should not be possible to resurrect Beagle 2 and retrieve data” from the probe.
Scientists suspected until now that the ship had been destroyed in the landing.
Beagle 2 was an ambitious collaboration between industry and British universities under the Mars Express project of the European Space Agency, the first European exploration of another planet.
The director of this European body, Jean-Jacques Dordain, welcomed Friday by the finding. “What 11 years ago was seen as a failure proved not to be a total failure. At least there was a landing on Mars” estimated Dordain.
One consolation of which may not enjoy Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, who led the project and died in May 2014.
“The history of space exploration is marked by both the success and the failure. This finding proves that Beagle 2 was a major success than we had thought of continuing European exploration of Mars, “they said David Parker, director of the European Space Agency.
Blur and Damien Hirst landed on Mars
The Mars Express mission was originally built by an orbiter carrying seven instruments of observation and the Beagle 2 probe.
Beagle 2 mission was to sample the red planet taken from two meters deep.
After six months of travel, the probe had to land on Christmas Day 2003 but something went wrong and lost po is definitely gave in February 2004.
“Without the full deployment, there was no way to contact her because the radio antenna was under the solar panels,” he told the BBC Professor Mark Sims, of Britain’s University of Leicester, who was part of the project. “The cause of the fault is pure speculation, but could be and probably was, a matter of bad luck, a strong boat that perhaps distorted structure” or “an airbag punch that not separated enough from the probe, hindering the deployment . “he added
In a government statement, Sims said:” Every Christmas since 2003 wondered what had happened. ” “To be frank, I never lost hope of knowing. The images show that were very close to achieving the goal of doing science on Mars,” he said.
To signal was operational after landing, Beagle 2 it would issue a song by the British band Blur and component to calibrate the cameras was the work of British contemporary artist Damien Hirst.
Place a ship on another planet requires a series of technological innovations that sometimes end being part of the everyday lives of people. For Beagle 2, for example, your gas detection system used today in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.
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