Posted by tourdemars to Mars Express at March 8, 2004 11:50 AM

The missing Beagle 2 lander may have crunched into the Martian dust after plummeting through an unexpectedly thin atmosphere. New measurements from the spacecraft's mothership, Mars Express, suggest the upper atmosphere can be far less dense than anyone thought. This could have been fatal for the lander because it relied on the atmosphere's braking effect to trigger the release of its parachute.