Beagle 2 might be in a crater: scientist

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Beagle 2 might be in a crater: scientist

Europe's first Mars lander "Beagle 2" might have fallen down a crater on the red planet, close to where the probe was due to touch down, a leading scientist said here Monday.

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Europe's first Mars lander "Beagle 2" might have fallen down a crater on the red planet, close to where the probe was due to touch down, a leading scientist said here Monday.

Cameras on the Mars-orbiting spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor took a picture of the Isidis Planitia, a flat basin on the planet where Beagle 2 was supposed to land on Sunday night.

"There is a crater of one kilometer wide in the center of the area," Colin Pillinger, chief scientist of the Beagle 2 team, tolda news conference in north London.

It is possible, although unlikely, that Beagle 2 may be unable to communicate because it landed in the crater. "We'd have to be incredibly unlucky that it went right down this crater," he added.

In the past few days, the European team has received no transmissions from the probe, which was supposed to touch down on the distant planet on Christmas morning to begin its search for Martian life.

NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey has passed four times over the area where scientists hope Beagle would have landed, without picking up a signal.

Scientists have now set up a "tiger team" of top experts to work through all possible reasons for the silence. The small group,based at the British National Space Center, Leicester, has drawn up a list of "blind" commands to send to Beagle that might prompt it to respond.

"We're working under the assumption that Beagle 2 is on the surface of Mars and for some reason cannot be (reached)," Beagle mission manager Dr. Mark Sims said at the news conference.

He added the team was looking at other problems including a software glitch that would interfere with Beagle's ability to copydata between different parts of its memory.

The Beagle team now believes that their best hope of raising the probe will come when Mars Express, the "mothership" which carried the "pocket watch" lander to the Red Planet, gets into position to contact its "baby" on January 4.

Mars Express is now heading away from the planet preparing for a major engine burn on Tuesday that will sweep it back into a polar orbit of Earth's near neighbor.

Britain's Science Minister Lord Sainsbury said the government remained committed to unmanned space exploration and did not consider the mission a failure.

"While we're disappointed that things have not gone according to plan, we are determined that the search should go on, both the search to make contact with Beagle 2 and also the search to answerthe long-term question about whether there is life on Mars," he told the news conference.

"Long term we need to be working with ESA (European Space Agency) to ensure that in some form there is a Beagle 3 which takes forwards this technology," he added.

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