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Showing Articles for: Mars Express Total Articles: 364 Newest: Feb 06, 2012 |
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Editor's Note: Shades of Phobos 2's mysterious disappearance...
The Beagle 2 team has announced a public event to take place at the Royal Society on Monday 8th March.
Close-up pictures taken by Europe's Mars Express probe of a volcano on the Red Planet reveal water could have flowed on its flanks in the past. Images of the 5,300m-high mountain, Hecates Tholus, taken 275km above Mars, also show signs of cratering on the slopes caused by volcanic activity.
It is the start of eclipse season for Mars Express. That means unavoidable passages of the spacecraft through the shadow of Mars, cutting it off from the sunlight that is converted into electrical power by the orbiter's solar arrays. This creates a nervous time for engineers at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.
While NASA's twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, garner all the headlines, the European Space Agency's satellite, Mars Express, is poised to deliver just as much science, including important clues in the hunt for Martian life, at a far lower price. NASA spent more than $800 million on its project, while Mars Express cost a mere €150 million, or about $190 million.
Europe's Mars Express orbiter has taken a detailed image of what scientists think is a glacial channel on the surface of the Red Planet. The picture was taken using the orbiter's high resolution camera at an altitude of 272 kilometres above Mars.
The European Space Agency has announced an inquiry in conjunction with the British government into why communication has been lost with the Mars lander Beagle 2. The science minister, Lord Sainsbury, said that the inquiry would be useful as a learning exercise for future planetary exploration missions.
Europe's Mars Express orbiter has stared down the throat of the Solar System's largest volcano, Olympus Mons, to produce the best ever images of the giant peak. The images, released on Wednesday, were taken with the orbiter's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) from a height of 273 kilometres and reveal details as small as 12 metres across.
This is the camera behind the stunning European imagery from Mars. The High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express is now mapping most of the Martian surface with unprecedented detail. The HRSC was originally designed for the Russian Mars ’96 space mission. After an unsuccessful launch in November 1996, the back-up model of the camera was modified for use on the European Mars Express mission. Another version, the HRSC-AX, has been built for airborne high-resolution 3D Earth reconnaissance and has already been used in a large number of projects.
The European and British space agencies on Feb. 11 announced the creation of a board of inquiry to determine how future Mars missions might avoid the fate of the lost Beagle 2 lander, which has not been seen or heard from since its Dec. 19 separation from the Mars Express orbiter. So little is known about what happened to Beagle 2 -- it is presumed to have entered the Martian atmosphere and landed on Dec. 25 -- that the inquiry will focus less on specific causes of the mission's failure than a broad survey of Beagle 2's financing, development and testing.
This image was aquired in orbit 18 on 14 January 2004 from an altitude of 275 km. It shows a region north of Valles Marineris located at between 5 and 10oN, 323oE. The image height is 50 km, it has a resolution of 12 m per pixel. The features in the picture indicate erosional processes possibly caused by water. North is to the right side of the picture.
As business development manager for Logica CMG's Space and Defence Division, Pat Norris has been charged with creating the IT infrastructure for some of Europe's more exotic public and private sector projects. ZDNet UK caught up with Norris to discuss the UK integrator's role in the ill-fated Mars probe Beagle 2, a separate Saturn mission and the politically tense Galileo project -- a European civilian rival to the US military's GPS system.
Gone without a trace. The British-built Beagle 2 lander remains lost in action after attempting a landing on Mars late last year. The probe was ejected from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter now circling the red planet. A Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) high-resolution view of the Beagle 2 landing area was released January 30. Malin Space Science Systems of San Diego, operator of the MOC, issued the search imagery.
British scientists have begun planning a "Beagle 3" mission to Mars for launch in 2007, even as they try their final attempt to contact the missing Beagle 2 lander. A message will be sent during the next seven days from the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft telling the Beagle 2 - if it is operational - to reboot its computer. That carries the risk that the machine will never return to life if it was working.
British scientists have begun planning a Beagle 3 mission to Mars for launch in 2007, even as they try their final "last resort" attempt to contact the missing Beagle 2 lander. A full review of what may have gone wrong with the craft will be led by Professor Colin Pillinger, the chief scientist on the Beagle 2 mission, at the beginning of February.
The commission of inquiry looking into the loss of the UK-built Beagle 2 lander will be hoping for one piece of evidence above all else in its investigation: a picture of the stricken probe on the surface of Mars. If it can get an image of an intact "pocket watch" robot on the Red Planet, this would significantly reduce the list of possible factors that could have blighted the mission.
Deeply disappointed British scientists read the last rites for their missing Mars lander Beagle 2 Monday, and called for a new space mission to replace the life-seeking probe. "Under these circumstances we have to begin to accept that if Beagle 2 is on the Martian surface, it is not active," Colin Pillinger, the probe's lead scientist, told a news conference. "But now is not the time to grieve. We must look to the future." After a series of attempts to contact the lander, which should have parachuted onto the surface of the Red Planet on Christmas day, one final attempt will be made to jolt it into life.
The ideas in the design of the Russian Mars-96 space vehicle, lost in 1996 on its way to orbit, were used in the European Mars-Express project, said Vasily Moroz, department chief at the Space Research Institute and one of the Mars-96 designers, at a press conference in Moscow on Monday.
Images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter, in colour and 3D, in orbit 18 on 14 January 2004 from a height of 275 km.
Data relayed from Europe's brand-new mission to Mars gave dramatic backing yesterday to theories that the Red Planet was once awash with water, one of the precious ingredients for life. First results from the unmanned spacecraft Mars Express sketched the vision of a planet whose surface was once sculpted by seas and glaciers and confirms indications that its South Pole is capped by frozen water. That boosts hopes that big reserves of ice may lie beneath the surface, providing fuel and sustenance for a future manned mission, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.
THE first direct evidence of water on Mars was beamed back yesterday by Mars Express, orbiting above the red planet. The European spacecraft, which carried the ill-fated British-built Beagle 2 to Mars, made the discovery on the planet's icy south pole.
Mars Express, ESA’s first mission to Mars, will reach its final orbit on 28 January. It has already been producing stunning results since its first instrument was switched on, on 5 January. The significance of the first data was emphasised by the scientists at a European press conference today at ESA’s Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.
Mars Express has made the first detection of a chemical signature of the water ice at the south pole. Officials said today they had essentially seen the vapors of water at the surface. "You look at the picture, look at the fingerprint and say this is water ice," said Allen Moorehouse of European Space Agency. "This is the first time it's been detected on the ground. This is the first direct confirmation."
Direct measurement of water on the surface of Mars - in the form of ice on the southern polar cap - tops the list of the first scientific data returned by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express mission. Principal investigators of the spacecraft's six instruments, turned on since 5 January, presented their results at a press conference in Darmstadt, Germany on Friday.
Europe's Mars orbiter has detected water molecules vapourizing from the Red Planet's south pole, scientists announced today, calling it the most direct evidence yet of water in the form of ice on the Martian surface. The quest for water on Mars - which could indicate life - has fascinated scientists for centuries. Mars watchers have long believed that the planet's poles contain frozen water, but previous scientific findings - including NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter's evidence of large amounts of ice - were based more on inferences, European Space Agency scientists said.
A landscape gashed with valleys is revealed in the first image from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. It shows an aerial view of part of the Solar System's grandest canyon, the Valles Marineris. The true-colour image was taken from 275 kilometres above the surface. It shows details as small as 12 metres wide in a view that stretches across 65 kilometres of the Red Planet's surface.
The first image of the Red Planet taken by Europe's Mars Express probe since it arrived in orbit has been released. The picture shows a part of the Valles Marineris, a giant canyon that runs across the middle of the planet.
ESA's Mars Express, successfully inserted into orbit around Mars on 25 December 2003, is about to reach its final operating orbit above the poles of the Red Planet. The scientific investigation has just started and the first results already look very promising, as this first close-up image shows.
It may be years before anyone sets foot on Mars, but the European Space Agency (ESA) today said it hoped to soon provide a daily forecast for weather on the red planet. Data will be provided by an experiment aboard the Mars Express spacecraft, which is making its final orbital adjustments around Mars after being captured by the red planet's gravity last month.
Mission scientists for the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft saw the first images and data from the orbiter on Thursday. Mike McKay, flight operations director at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, told New Scientist: "They blew me away." The images will be released to the public on 20 January, with the first scientific results and 3-D videos expected to follow three days later.
Disappointed European scientists insisted they were still in the race to find signs of life on Mars after another attempt to reach their missing Beagle 2 probe failed to pick up a signal yesterday. As NASA scientists proudly broadcast the first full-colour pictures of the Martian surface taken by their craft that landed safely over the weekend, their colleagues at the European Space Agency were scrambling to keep their first mission to Mars alive.
The latest efforts to contact a British-led mission to Mars from its orbiting mother ship failed Wednesday, compounding fears that the Beagle 2 probe crashed during a Christmas Day touchdown. Gloom surrounding the first all-European mission to Mars contrasts with the joy at NASA, whose robotic explorer Spirit safely landed on the Red Planet during the weekend and has transmitted high-definition pictures in the last few days. “We did not get a signal from the surface of Mars, but this is not the end of the story — we have more shots to play,” the European Space Agency’s David Southwood said.
Europe's Mars Express orbiter failed to pick up a signal from the Beagle 2 probe on Wednesday, leaving a disappointed mission control without sign from the lander since it was spun off toward the Red Planet in mid-December.
It's been nine days since the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 is believed to have passed through the Martian atmosphere and landed on the surface, but so far it hasn't uttered so much as a tentative yelp. Although the dozen or so attempts through NASA's Mars Odyssey and the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in England have failed to pick up any sound from Beagle, ESA scientists are not ready to give up hope yet. At this point, the "most likely scenario" for making contact will be next Wednesday, on January 7, at 1:13 p.m. Central European TIME (CET) [12:13 Greenwich Mean Time], Mars Express Project Scientist Agustin Chicarro told reporters yesterday in a press conference hosted by The Planetary Society at its headquarters in Pasadena, California.
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter failed for an eighth time to contact the Beagle 2 probe Wednesday, but scientists say they have not given up hope of hearing from the lander, which was to have touched down on Mars almost a week ago. Mission controllers sent Beagle a message Wednesday designed to reset its internal clock. Scientists have said a problem with the clock's software, confusing the timing of its planned transmissions, could be behind its silence. They said it was too early to tell whether the reset command had worked. While mission scientists hope a technical glitch is the problem, they acknowledge that Beagle may have tumbled down a crater on the rocky Martian surface.
This morning, at 09:00 CET, the first European mission to Mars registered another operational success. The Mars Express flight control team at ESOC prepared and executed another critical manoeuvre, bringing the spacecraft from an equatorial orbit into a polar orbit around Mars. All commands were transmitted to Mars Express via ESA's new Deep Space Station in New Norcia, Australia. This morning, the main engine of Mars Express was fired for four minutes to turn the spacecraft into a new direction, at a distance of 188 000 kilometres from Mars and about 160 million kilometres from Earth. On 4 January 2004, this new polar orbit will be reduced even further.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft performed a major maneuver today, changing its initial "capture" orbit achieved on Chirstmas morning to a new orbit needed for the probe's scientific investigations of the Red Planet. The main engine of Mars Express fired for four minutes to turn the spacecraft into the new direction while flying 188,000 kilometers away from the planet.
Mission controllers were preparing Tuesday for a crucial maneuver to redirect Europe's Mars orbiter nearer to the Red Planet's poles the first step in pushing it into a lower orbit where it can listen for its missing Beagle 2 surface probe. The British-built Beagle 2 is believed to have reached the Martian surface early on Christmas Day, its impact softened by gas bags and parachutes. But several attempts to hear its signal have not been successful.
Britain's Beagle 2 space probe may be stranded in a giant crater on Mars. Scientists have been unable to contact the tiny £35million craft since it landed on the Red Planet on Christmas Day. Since then they have discovered a crater, hundreds of metres deep, in the middle of the probe’s landing area. If it IS in the hole, Beagle 2 could not communicate with Earth.
FIRST they admitted that communications between Beagle 2 and the nearest spacecraft had never been tested. Now scientists leading Britain’s Mars mission have revealed that the probe may be stranded in a deep crater, which was only spotted 20 minutes after the craft was due to land. The latest potential setback for the Open University-led team was revealed yesterday, as the fate of the 143lb probe continued to elude astronomers. However, Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, suggested the government would back a Beagle 3 mission if it failed.
The British Government would back another mission to Mars if the present Beagle-2 attempt fails, the Science minister, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, said yesterday. British scientists now think that the missing lander, which entered the planet's atmosphere on Christmas Day but has since sent back no signals, could have fallen into a crater known to be in the middle of the landing zone and may be damaged, or unable to get any sunlight to recharge its batteries.
With Mars Express safely in orbit around the Red Planet, all ears are turned towards the Martian surface in an effort to detect a signal from Beagle 2, the United Kingdom’s Mars mission that was to bounce to a landing on Christmas day. "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 answer the long term question about whether there is life on Mars," said Lord Sainsbury, the United Kingdom’s Minister for Science and Innovation.
Four days after Beagle 2 was expected to touch martian soil, the European Space Agency (ESA) still has received no word from its lander. Scientists don't know whether a hardware or software failure is preventing the signal from being given, whether current detection methods are insufficient to pick up the signal, whether Beagle 2 landed off-target, or whether it landed safely at all.
A TOP member of the Beagle 2 team has admitted after the failure of more attempts to find Britain’s lost Mars probe: “It’s not good news.” Professor Alan Wells, from Beagle 2’s control centre in Leicester, was speaking after another fly-by by Nasa’s orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft failed to contact the craft. This was despite it being daylight on Mars when Beagle 2’s transmitter should have been fully active. Wells, senior consultant at the British National Space Centre, said a command signal had also been sent via Odyssey to reset Beagle 2’s timer – but to no avail. Scientists had suspected that a clock error might have meant Beagle 2 was transmitting at the wrong time.
Two attempts to communicate with Beagle 2 during the last 24 hours - first with the 76 metre (250 feet) Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, UK, and then this morning with the Mars Odyssey orbiter - ended without receiving a signal. Despite this outcome, fresh attempts to scan for a signal from Beagle 2 will be made over the coming days. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers are eagerly awaiting ESA's Mars Express spacecraft return close enough to Mars to try to establish contact with Beagle 2. This may be possible from 4 January 2004.
UK scientists are still trying to pick up a signal from the Beagle 2 Mars mission landing craft. They say they are still optimistic that the mission can be successful despite the failure of a second attempt to pick up a signal. A similar attempt yesterday by the NASA spacecraft Mars Odyssey had also proved unsuccessful.
A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars failed on Friday to pick up a signal that would confirm the survival of the European Mars lander Beagle 2, a British agency said. The Beagle, designed to search for signs of life on Mars, is believed to have landed shortly before 10 p.m. ET Wednesday, but three efforts to pick up its signal have now failed.
There has been no signal detected from the surface of Mars on Friday that would indicate the UK-built Beagle 2 lander got down safely. The US orbiter Mars Odyssey flew over the assumed landing zone just after 1800 GMT but heard no transmission. The giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in northwest England has been left to listen to the planet for several hours in the hope it can find Beagle. Scientists refuse to give up hope and will continue to scan Mars for a call.
European scientists, hoping for a sign their Mars lander Beagle 2 arrived safely, anxiously awaited Friday's attempt by a U.S. orbiter to pick up a communication after more than 36 hours of silence from the surface of the Red Planet. "It's like sending somebody a love letter, and you know they got it and you're waiting for a response," said Professor Colin Pillinger, the day after the tiny craft was supposed to have landed on the surface of Mars, opened its solar panels and called home.
Even though a Mars probe has failed to signal it has landed, scientists at the European Space Agency said on Friday the primary mission goal to put a satellite in orbit around Mars was achieved. Officials at ESA headquarters in Darmstadt remained hopeful that the British probe Beagle 2 that was scheduled to land on Mars on Christmas Day will still send a signal to indicate it has arrived.
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’s call-sign, a “tune” composed by members of the pop group Blur, sounds like a simple arrangement of ascending notes. But there is more to it than that. Bass guitarist Alex James explains that the nine-note scale was based on a “Fibonacci sequence” – a mathematical pattern that re-occurs throughout nature. Fibonacci numbers are not random. In a Fibonacci series, each number is the sum of the previous two.
At 03:45 CET today, the Beagle 2 lander should have entered the Martian atmosphere. The Mars Express orbiter began its main engine ignition sequence to start the 34-minute main engine burn for achieving Mars Orbit Insertion. At this time the two spacecraft will be 2700 kilometres apart in space as they began the most crucial stages of their missions.
Europe's Beagle 2 spacecraft should be on Mars, but mission controllers in Germany will have to wait several more hours to learn whether the lander touched down successfully. Late Wednesday evening, the control teams sent the final commands to put the Mars Express craft into orbit and to plunge Beagle 2 through the planet's atmosphere.
The British-built spacecraft Beagle 2 is believed to have touched down on the surface of the planet Mars. Scientists are awaiting confirmation that the £35m probe landed safely after a 400 million kilometre voyage which has taken six months.
Current calculations suggest that the landing ellipse for Britain's Mars Lander, Beagle 2, is 70km (43 miles) long by 11km (7 miles) across. The calculation was made by Arthur Smith of Fluid Gravity Engineering. The area of this landing ellipse would barely cover London.
At 12:00 CET today, the Mars Express orbiter was 169 000 kilometres from Mars and 156 167 000 kilometres from Earth. The orbiter is now in the final configuration for Mars Orbit Insertion. No more commands are being sent to the spacecraft until after its capture by Mars.
British probe the size of an open umbrella was due to land on Mars on Thursday and start trying to answer a question which has fascinated mankind for centuries - is there life on the red planet? Beagle 2, which weighs just 34 kg, is scheduled to open its panoply of parachutes and airbags and float down to the surface of Mars just before 0300 GMT Christmas Day.
European space officials said the Mars Express craft was "perfectly on course" toward the Red Planet, giving them confidence for a critical Christmas Day manoeuvre to fire it into orbit - key to Europe's first mission to explore whether life ever existed on the planet. In preparation, mission control in the west German city of Darmstadt sent the first orbit-related commands to the craft. The mission's other component is a probe that is due to touch down on Mars early December 25 European time as well.
Early Christmas morning, London time, a 70-pound British spacecraft, launched last June aboard a Russian rocket and hitchhiking behind a sophisticated European Space Agency orbital vehicle, is set to touch down on the surface of Mars. The lander, named the Beagle 2 -- in honor of the sailing ship that transported Charles Darwin on his historic voyage to the Galapagos Islands in 1831 -- represents an ingenious but daring entry in what is becoming a race to explore the red planet and establish once and for all whether it ever has harbored living organisms. If it succeeds, it could show up its bigger and much more expensive American cousins.
European space controllers said they repositioned the Mars Express spacecraft Saturday, steering it away from its collision course with the Red Planet and moving it toward Martian orbit on Christmas. The crucial maneuver comes a day after the Mars Express successfully separated from the unmanned Beagle 2 surface probe, sending the lander on its trajectory toward Mars.
Scientists hope the Beagle 2 mission to Mars will inspire greater interest in science among school students. The spacecraft is due to land on the surface of Mars on Christmas Day, having detached from its "mothership", the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, on Friday. The University of Leicester and the National Space Centre, also in Leicester, are using the mission as he basis for an educational pack available to schools.
This was the moment when the man behind the Beagle 2 space probe knew it had safely parted from its mother ship. Professor Colin Pillinger beamed and clasped his hands in glee yesterday as the British probe sped off towards a landing on Mars. Prof Pillinger was among an audience of VIPs including the Duke of York in London when the news came live from mission control in Germany.
To cheers from scientists in Britain and Germany, a European spacecraft the size of a large washing machine detached a package the size of a home barbecue yesterday and sent it spinning gently on a five-day journey towards Mars at 12,500mph. On board were a parachute, a set of airbags, a heatshield, a camera, a drill, a torch, a Damien Hirst painting, music by Blur, a set of solar panels and an oven capable of heating rock to 1,000 C - powered by a source just big enough to light up a 60 watt bulb.
At first glance, this photo looks like yet another lame attempt at a UFO hoax. But in reality it's an important milestone in Western Europe's first attempt to land a science package on the surface of another planet. At 8:31 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on December 19, the British-built Beagle 2 Mars lander successfully separated from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. Mars Express's Visual Monitoring Camera took this image of Beagle 2 (far left) about two minutes after separation. Beagle 2 is just 20 meters (66 feet) from the mother ship and pulling ahead at a relative speed of about 0.3 meter per second.
Beagle 2, the British probe that will seek out life on Mars, was ejected from its mother ship yesterday and started the final leg of its journey. Shortly after 8.30am, the tiny craft left the European Mars Express and was sent spinning towards the Red Planet. If it survives the descent, the £50 million lander will bounce to a stop on Christmas Day and begin searching rocks and soil for traces of microbes. A grainy black and white picture of Beagle 2 drifting through space was captured by Mars Express's camera seconds after separation and sent back to Earth.
Europe's Mars Express orbiter successfully ejected its Beagle-2 surface probe today, clearing the way for a Christmas Day landing of Beagle-2 and the insertion of Mars Express into orbit around the red planet. Both probes will search for signs of present or past life on Mars.
Severe storms on Mars could threaten the success of Beagle 2 landing on the Red Planet on Christmas Day. Beagle 2, built and designed at EADS Astrium in Stevenage, will begin the most crucial part of its journey to the Red Planet when it leaves its mother ship Mars Express tomorrow morning (Friday). It will then hurtle towards Mars at 21,000kph and be monitored on the final five days of its journey by scientists and technicians at the National Space Centre (NSC) in Leicester.
Speedera Networks, a leading global provider of on-demand distributed application and content delivery services, and Capcave, an Internet systems integrator based in the Netherlands, today announced that the two organizations are working directly with the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide live streaming of the Mars Express probe scheduled to arrive on Mars at Christmas. "Mars Express has been designed to perform a thorough exploration of the Red Planet, not only searching for water but daring to search for life itself," said Fulvio Drigani, ESA's portal manager. "The Web site is key to bringing this ambitious project home to the viewers on Earth. Since we expect record traffic to our site, after a rigorous examination ESA has selected Speedera and Capcave to stream this historic event."
It's wintertime in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and a flying saucer is about to land. Back on Earth where it comes from, the craft is known as the Beagle 2, sent to Mars by the European Space Agency in search of life. More accurately, the Beagle 2 will be looking for chemical traces of life--telltale signs that life once existed, or perhaps, exists right now on the red planet. Touchdown is scheduled for Christmas Day 2003. The Beagle 2 will precede two NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, slated to land in January.
Any football or rugby fan knows that when a player kicks the ball, there is no longer anything they can do to influence its path. The player must trust to their own skill for the ball to reach its intended destination. What has all this to do with Mars Express? Three days from now, on 19 December 2003, Mars Express must, like an expert rugby player, ‘pass’ Beagle 2 on to the next player, Mars. The problem is that Beagle 2 has no thrusters on board, so cannot influence its own trajectory.
Calum Stirling stands in front of his three-storey-high image of Mars celebrating the Beagle 2’s landing on the red planet on the 25th. Picture: Robert Perry IN THE 1960s, when eminent architects like Sir Basil Spence were hired to build the "new" Gorbals, the urban landscape they made was likened to life on Mars, a "Utopian" wasteland that never worked. The world turned and a second, more hospitable new Gorbals is emerging - and this time life on Mars is represented only by a uniquely symbolic work of art.
Ground controllers of Europe's Mars Express satellite on Dec. 16 successfully completed a precision-pointing maneuver to prepare the satellite for a planned Dec. 19 ejection of its small Beagle-2 lander, the mission's flight director said. Michael McKay, flight operations director at the European Space Agency's Esoc space operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, said Mars Express was rotated and its engines briefly fired to increase the satellite's speed as it approaches Mars as part of the maneuver.
Launched on 2 June 2003, after a six-month cruise at an average speed of about 10 kilometres per second and covering a distance of about 400 million kilometres, ESA's Mars Express will arrive at Mars on Christmas Day. After a very complicated and challenging series of operations during the night of 24/25 December 2003, the probe will be injected into an elliptical orbit near the poles of the Red Planet, while the Beagle 2 lander – released from the mother craft six days earlier – is expected to touchdown on the surface of Mars.
An industrial estate in Leicester is an unlikely home for Britain's first ever mission into space, let alone the base for a team of scientists who could be the first people to find life on Mars. But in a small complex of buildings next to the council vehicle depot, the British National Space Centre, as it is grandly named, is the command centre for the European Space Agency's first attempt to explore the surface of another planet. It is where a team will direct Beagle 2, a tiny, shell-shaped, British-built lander, which could find the first proof that alien life exists.
The control centre is ready and a big Christmas celebration is expected when, or if, the UK's most ambitious scientific project, the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, makes landfall on Christmas Day. In true British low-budget fashion, a single Linux-based workstation at the Lander Operations Control Centre (LOCC) is being used to send commands and receive vital data from Beagle 2.
2004 is going to be a busy time for the red planet, Mars. The crucible for Science Fiction fantasies of alien life is about to be visited by not one - but three inter-planetary probes. Two have been sent by NASA and will undertake surface studies in different regions of the planet. Named "Opportunity" and "Spirit", these traditional rover-style vehicles will range far and wide across the rock-strewn Martian landscape gathering data about it's geology. The European Space Agency's probe "Beagle 2" on the other hand, will lie static on the slopes of the Isidis Planitia - a 1,500 km escarpement in the highlands of the Martian Equatorial Region - where it will gather data about the Martian atmosphere and potential for life. Mars Express was launched by the ESA on June 2nd 2003, and the orbiter carrying "The Beagle 2" will arrive at the Red Planet shortly after Christmas.
After a journey of 400 million km, ESA's Mars Express is now approaching its final destination. On 19 December, the spacecraft is scheduled to release the Beagle 2 lander it has been carrying since its launch on 2 June. At 9:31 CET, ESA's ground control team at Darmstadt (Germany) will send the command for the Beagle 2 lander to separate from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device will be fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which will gently push Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft.
Mars Express, ESA’s first probe to Mars, still has some challenges to face. The spacecraft has successfully come through its first power test after the gigantic solar flare on 28 October. Since 17 November the on-board software has been 'frozen' after several updates and the spacecraft is now quietly proceeding to its destination. The next major task, starting on 19 December, will be to safely release the Beagle 2 lander.
Like the little train that thought it could in the children's story, a bargain-basement spacecraft no bigger than a bicycle wheel is poised to land on Mars Christmas Day and begin the first direct search for extraterrestrial life there in almost 30 years. The lander, conceived and built in Britain, is already a scientific success story for packing the most precise detection gear ever to reach the Red Planet into the smallest package. Beagle 2 has also captured the public imagination here in a grassroots way that the slick NASA publicity machine has seldom managed in the United States.
VideoTalk is an exciting new multi-media feature that discusses the questions we hope will be answered by pioneering space exploration. See and hear exactly what evidence we hope to find on the surface and in the atmosphere of this rusty planet.
Mars Express, ESA's first probe to Mars, still has some challenges to face. The spacecraft has successfully come through its first power test after the gigantic solar flare on 28 October. Since 17 November the on-board software has been 'frozen' after several updates and the spacecraft is now quietly proceeding to its destination. The next major task, starting on 19 December, will be to safely release the Beagle 2 lander.
European space officials on Wednesday showed off the first pictures of Mars sent back by the Mars Express spacecraft as it heads for a Christmas rendezvous with the red planet. The pictures, taken from 5,4 million kilometres away, aren't top quality, but they do prove that the spacecraft's German-made HRSC high-resolution camera is in working order before it begins orbiting Mars and snapping pictures close up.
After surviving a vigorous battering from the worst solar storms in recent history, Mars Express and Beagle 2 are now well into the final leg of their six-month journey. Although Mars Express's navigation system was temporarily blinded by the clouds of charged particles rushing from the Sun, tests have revealed that there was no long-term damage. Last month's major course correction put the probes on a collision course with the red planet for the first time.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express has taken its first picture of the red planet as it gears up for arrival later this month. The photograph was taken by the probe's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) Dec. 1 and released today. It shows Mars from about 3.4 million miles (5.5 million kilometers) away. It is a very unusual view of Mars, ESA scientists said, because the planet is illuminated in a way never seen from Earth. The Sun shines on part of the western hemisphere, but more than a third of the Martian disk lies in the dark.
The Mars Express spacecraft, despite a series of intense solar flares that occurred late October-early November in active sunspots regions, is in good health and is operating normally. The spacecraft flew in the intense radiation environment that resulted from the exceptional solar and geomagnetic activity associated with these regions, temporarily causing disturbances on the star trackers. These disturbances, which were over within a few days, did not cause damage and did not constitute a threat to the mission.
The Mars Express spacecraft, despite a series of intense solar flares that occurred late October-early November in active sunspots regions, is in good health and is operating normally. The spacecraft flew in the intense radiation environment that resulted from the exceptional solar and geomagnetic activity associated with these regions, temporarily causing disturbances on the star trackers. These disturbances, which were over within a few days, did not cause damage and did not constitute a threat to the mission.
ESA's Mars Express probe is scheduled to arrive at Mars at Christmas: the Beagle 2 lander is expected to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet during the night of 24 to 25 December.
Around Christmas, Europe's first Mars lander, Beagle 2, will encounter the large equatorial basin known as Isidis Planitia. Unlike the twin NASA rovers also on course for their early 2004 landings, Beagle 2 is more like a mining furnace than a wheeled car. Expected to test martian soil for any evidence of remnant biological activity, the soft-lander continues a journey first began with the 1970's Viking explorations--how best to explore for biosignatures using a remote laboratory?
Europe's mission to the Red Planet, Mars Express, is on schedule to arrive at the planet on Christmas Day, 2003. The lander, Beagle 2, is due to descend through the Martian atmosphere and touch down also on 25 December. Mars Express is now within 20 million kilometres of the Red Planet and the next mission milestone comes on 19 December, when Mars Express will release Beagle 2. The orbiter spacecraft will send Beagle 2 spinning towards the planet on a precise trajectory.
A MID Wales robot is on schedule to land on Mars on Christmas Day. Beagle 2 has just entered the latest stage in its mission to find traces of life on the red planet and the brains or "smart" software for the robot's arm has been created by six experts from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA), who have spent five years working on the project.
A British-built craft designed to scour the surface of Mars for signs of life is scheduled to land on the planet on Christmas Day, scientists said this week.
Europe's mission to the Red Planet, Mars Express, is on schedule to arrive at the planet on Christmas Day, 2003. "The lander, Beagle 2, is due to descend through the Martian atmosphere and touch down also on 25 December.
Europe's Mars Express spacecraft has overcome the effects of last week's solar flares, which temporarily knocked out navigation equipment aboard the orbiter while leaving the mission's Beagle 2 lander unscathed. Researchers with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express mission said their spacecraft is in good health after solar storms blinded the orbiter's two star trackers for up to 15 hours. Mission controllers said both instruments, which trackers are crucial to keeping Mars Express oriented properly, are now working properly and there appears to be no long-term damage. The flares also delayed a scheduled Beagle 2 checkout procedure, but caused no ill effects otherwise.
A British-built craft designed to scour the surface of Mars for signs of life is scheduled to land on the planet on Christmas Day, scientists said Tuesday. The Beagle 2 lander is traveling aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express craft, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2, 2003.
The British-built Mars lander, Beagle 2, is on schedule to reach the Martian surface on Christmas Day. Mission officials say its parent space craft, Mars Express, has survived a massive solar storm and is within 20 million kilometres of the Red Planet. Beagle 2 is due to descend through the Martian atmosphere and touch down on 25 December, 2003.
It may look like a garden barbecue, or a giant pocket watch. But it is, in fact, a space probe - on Christmas Day it will land on Mars and start exploring. Here, Colin Pillinger, the British scientist behind this shoestring project, tells the story of the Beagle 2.
Main media events surrounding the arrival of ESA’s Mars Express at Mars ESA’s Mars Express probe is scheduled to arrive at Mars at Christmas: the Beagle 2 lander is expected to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet on the night of 24 to 25 December, 2003.
The straight-talking, chess-loving Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, has a new cause to champion - the British mission to land on Mars. This week, he joined Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and Mars scientist Professor Colin Pillinger to launch educational resources linked to the Beagle 2 project, as BBC News Online's Helen Briggs reports.
A British space project to explore Mars is being used to inspire school children to take an interest in science. The school project, backed by Education Secretary Charles Clarke, is the latest attempt to try to make science more interesting and to capture the imaginations of youngsters.
Britain's mission to Mars is being used as the launch pad for a drive to boost children's interest in science. Ministers unveiled an education information pack today on the Beagle 2 lander, designed and built by UK scientists and engineers, which is on board Europe's Mars Express orbiter and is scheduled to land on the red planet on Christmas Day.
Scientists are warning that the spurt of dramatic solar activity may not be over yet. One astronomer described the two large gas clouds that reached the Earth earlier this week as 'unprecedented.' However, experts say that although unusual, the events are not beyond the bounds of 'normal' solar activity. En route to the Red Planet, the Mars Express spacecraft was hit by the cloud of charged particles but it was designed to withstand these events.
MEDIA BRIEFING INVITATION 10.00am, 11th November 2003 Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG
The meteorite that revived hopes of finding life on Mars is to be analysed by scientists working on the British-led Beagle 2 mission. The meteorite is to be re-examined to help calibrate the "eyes" of Beagle 2 - the stereo camera system the Mars lander will use to view the strip of rock and soil where it bounces to a halt.
Britain's first mission to Mars, the Beagle Two, will land on the red planet on Christmas day, and here's your chance to get involved...
The European Space Agency's (ESA) unmanned mission to Mars is suffering from power shortages after its solar panels stopped functioning, the Russian space agency, Rosaviakosmos, said Wednesday.
Power supply problems have appeared at the Mars-Express interplanetary space station of the European Space Agency (ESA) launched from the Russian Baikonur-2 space centre on June 2 this year. The station's wing with solar semiconductor batteries has become disconnected from the station's power system for an unknown reason, which reduced by a quarter power supply to the instruments at Mars-Express, a RIA Novosti correspondent was told Wednesday at the Russian Rosaviakosmos aerospace agency.
On 27 August 2003, Mars is less than 56 million kilometres away -- approaching closer to our planet than it has done in over 60,000 years. About the same time as this closest approach, Mars Express passes the halfway mark of its journey, in terms of distance along its trajectory. On 1 September 2003, as it hurtles through space at 10,800 kilometres per hour, the spacecraft will have covered over 242 million kilometres, half of the total of 485 million kilometres needed to arrive at Mars. Note that the distance travelled is not the same as the distance between the Earth and Mars.
Professor Pillinger, a planetary scientist from Britain's Open University, is the public face of Britain's first mission to Mars. As the world's amateur and professional skywatchers turn their gaze towards Mars on August 27, when it will be a mere 56 million kilometres away, his thoughts will be on the small payload of the European Space Agency's orbiter, Mars Express. The Beagle 2 lander, named after Charles Darwin's famous ship, has been six years and about £30 million ($A75 million) in the making. Its mission: to discover whether there is or has been life on Mars.
Europe's leading space and satellite company, EADS Astrium, whose Stevenage-based engineers and technicians designed and built the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, today announced that it has become Beagle 2's first commercial sponsor. EADS Astrium's backing, worth over £1 million, is the first sponsorship of its kind in space exploration.
Europe's leading space and satellite company, EADS Astrium, whose Stevenage-based engineers and technicians designed and built the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, today announced that it has become Beagle 2's first commercial sponsor. EADS Astrium's backing, worth over £1 million, is the first sponsorship of its kind in space exploration.
The European Mars Express took time out from its journey to Mars to turn around and snap a picture of Earth and the Moon. The picture is not only pleasing to the eye but thrilling for project scientists, as it represents the first observational data to be sent home by the probe. Along with other data recently collected and returned, it shows the spacecraft's working as expected.
The Beagle 2 lander has passed its first routine "health check" on the journey to Mars. Engineers made contact with the module at the weekend to test various systems as it hurtled towards the Red Planet onboard Mars Express. It appears to be in good shape for the 400-million-kilometre journey.
Europe's first Mars space craft is suffering from a power glitch. However, controllers believe it will make no difference to the mission itself.
Europe's first solo mission to Mars has been hit by a 30-percent shortfall in power, but this should not affect any of its goals, the European Space Agency (ESA) here said Wednesday. Ground engineers checking out the Mars Express as it heads towards the Red Planet came across a faulty connection between its solar wings and a unit that distributes the electricity generated by those panels, ESA said in a mission update.
ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is progressing further every day on its journey to the Red Planet. Everything is set for arrival at Mars on the night of 25 December 2003, after a journey of about 400 million kilometres. In the weeks since its launch, engineers have started to thoroughly test the spacecraft and its equipment.
An anomaly with a key computer memory unit aboard Europe's Mars Express, currently speeding towards the red planet, has interrupted remote testing of the spacecraft, the European Space Agency revealed on Tuesday.
The European Space Agency (ESA) denied Tuesday a report by its Russian counterpart that its just-launched mission to Mars had been hit by a major communications problem. The Russian agency, Rosaviakosmos, said Monday that communications were down between the onboard computer of the Mars Express orbiter, en route for the Red Planet, and the Beagle-2, a British-built lander which it carries.
First contact with the UK's Beagle 2 Mars lander, which set off for the Red Planet on 2 June, has been delayed by a week. The postponement is required to allow engineers time to decipher an unexpected message from an instrument on Beagle's mother ship, Mars Express.
Britain's Mars lander Beagle 2, currently speeding towards the Red Planet, will be activated on Friday for the first time since its launch. "This will tell us whether we survived launch," says Jim Clemmet, engineering manager for Beagle 2 at prime contractors Astrium. "It is also one of the few occasions [during the voyage] when we'll be able to check that it's healthy."
AEA Battery Systems (AEABS) provides power solution for European 'Mars Express' spacecraft and British-led 'Beagle 2' lander. UK based AEA Technology Battery Systems contributed to the race to find life on Mars this week with the launch of 'Mars Express', Europe's first voyage to another planet. Both the spacecraft 'Mars Express' and its 'Beagle 2' lander which sits on top benefit from AEA Technology's unique lithium-ion battery technology.
Europe's first mission to the Red Planet, continues its successful mission with another successful 'high-risk' post-launch milestone. Mars Express engineers breathed a sigh of relief this morning at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Germany. If a particularly delicate operation had not proceeded as planned, it would have been impossible to deploy the Mars Express lander, Beagle 2, on arrival at Mars.
A signal sent by the space craft to ground control confirmed what scientists had hoped - the launch had been successful and the probe was on the correct path for Mars. The Mars Express orbiter, carrying the British-built lander, Beagle 2, left Earth on a Russian Soyuz-Fregat launcher. The rocket blasted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 1845 BST (1745 GMT) on Monday. It will take six months for the orbiter and its lander passenger to reach the Red Planet.
Americans are participating in several ways in the European Space Agency's first mission to Mars, launched today from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. "The exploration of Mars is an international adventure," said Dr. Cathy Weitz at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. "Our rover missions have key participants in Europe, and there are U.S. scientists on the teams for every instrument on Mars Express." Weitz serves dual coordinating roles as project scientist for NASA's participation in Mars Express and as program scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers.
It's small, lightweight and simple in design. And European scientists hope it will become the little spaceship that could. The European Space Agency launched its first mission to Mars today in the form of a disc-like ship carrying a compact lander named the Beagle 2. The robots' main mission is to find signs of life — past or present — on or just under Mars' surface. The Mars Express mission was put together in record time (five years) and with a humble budget (an estimated $60 million, or nearly eight times less than the production and launch cost of one of NASA's upcoming Mars landers).
ESA’s Mars Express is a pioneering mission for several reasons. It is the first European voyage to Mars, it has been built at much less than the usual cost, and in record time. Mars Express is the first example of ESA’s new style of developing scientific missions: faster, smarter and more cost-effective, but without compromising reliability and quality - there have been no cuts in tests or pre-launch preparations. Mars Express will face demanding technical challenges during its trip to the Red Planet and ESA engineers have worked hard to make sure it meets them.
Europe's landmark space mission set to lift off for Mars next week will be a litmus test of its strength in robotic technology in rivalry with US and Japanese competitors, according to a senior computer engineer for the project.
It's a space lander the size of a portable barbecue, stapled to a mothership not much bigger than a household refrigerator, and it's about to make history. On June 2 - the date could slip, but not by much - Beagle 2 will leave Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and begin a journey of 400m km. Mars Express will be the first European mission to reach another planet and Beagle 2 will be the first British lander to unfold under extraterrestrial skies. The first carries ground-penetrating radar that will "feel" deep below the surface of a freezing, arid, hostile planet and the second a little mole that will explore the surface and even burrow a metre below it. Between them, they might answer one of the great questions of the past 300 years: is there, or was there, life on Mars?
On 2 June 2003, the first European mission to Mars will be launched. It will also be the first European mission to any planet. Mars Express has been designed to perform the most thorough exploration ever of the Red Planet. It has the ambitious aim of not only searching for water, but also understanding the 'behaviour' of the planet as a whole. But maybe the most ambitious aim of all -- Mars Express is the only mission in more than 25 years that dares to search for life.
Europe is on the fast track to Mars with a boxy little probe and a Martian lander named after a ship that was named after a dog. If all goes well, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its Mars Express spacecraft on June 2, carrying with it the Beagle 2 lander and Europe's hopes of finding water and evidence of life on another world.
How do you visualise the Red Planet? If you would like to share your ideas with thousands of ESA Portal visitors, there is still time. The deadline for round 2 is 28 May 2003. You can draw, paint or make a collage of pictures to present your idea of Mars. It could be the planet as seen from Earth, what the lander might find on the surface, life on Mars, or your ideas for the future colonisation of the planet. ESA will select and publish the best of these in a web animation. Images will be selected based on originality and graphic appeal. This invitation is open to all ages and nationalities – the only limit is your imagination!
On June 2, a Soyuz rocket will lift off from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and carry with it the European Space Agency's first Mars-bound spacecraft. Mars Express is not only ESA's inaugural Mars mission but also the first of at least four missions destined for the Red Planet between late 2003 and early 2004.
Europe's first mission to Mars will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, 2 June. The Soyuz-Fregat launcher carrying the Mars Express orbiter, and its lander, Beagle 2, is expected to leave the launch pad at 2345 local time (1745 GMT).
The launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft is slated for June 2, Interfax was told at the Baikonur space center on Tuesday. Quoting ESA experts, it noted that launch preparations are proceeding without any technical problems. Final operations are underway before fuelling the spacecraft.
Just before midnight on 2 June (23:45 local time, 19:45 CET) a Soyuz rocket operated by Starsem will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and Mars Express will be on its way. The spacecraft was given the green light to launch following completion of a successful flight readiness review on 3 May.
European researchers hope to pin down exactly where Mars is hiding its water by looking through the planet rather than on its surface. A ground penetrating radar system aboard Mars Express, a European Space Agency (ESA) probe set to launch in early June, will use radio waves to map out any water reservoirs as deep as 3 miles (5 kilometers) below the surface. "We are looking for serious amounts of water, for mountains of the stuff," said Iwan Williams, a professor with Queen Mary University of London and co-investigator of the radar experiment. "Everybody believes that it's there."
The future Mars landing site for the European Beagle 2 mission, lies on the floor of a large impact basin in the northern hemisphere. Its low-lying plains include strings of cratered domes from ancient volcanoes and a series of small channels that indicate ancient water activity. Called Isidis Planitia, the site may also contain rocks from deep within the Martian crust that were blasted to the surface by its formative impact. Mission planners look to launch in June from the Russian Cosmodrome, then descend to Mars six months later in search for evidence of past life.
A European spacecraft bound for Mars in June will "feel" miles below the surface of the red planet for ice and water. It will also launch a little British lander, roughly the size of a backyard barbecue, which will bounce down just north of the equator and burrow into the Martian topsoil in search of chemical evidence of life.
The UK's first ever voyage to another planet is to be shown in full view of the public. Visitors to The National Space Centre in Leicester will be able to see everything the controllers of the mission to Mars do. It's something Nasa, the space organisation in the US, has never done.
When ESA's Mars Express reaches the Red Planet in December 2003, there will be a drill on board its Beagle 2 lander. This drill will dig into the surface to take samples of the Martian rocks. Who would imagine that the creativity of an enthusiastic dentist is behind a 'cosmic' drill?
A British scientist says he is confident that Europe's first solo mission to Mars will find water under the surface of the Red Planet. Professor Iwan Williams says a radar instrument (Marsis) on the Mars Express spacecraft can look deep enough to find water, if it is there.
In the sixth instalment of the BBC News Online Mars Express diary, project manager Rudi Schmidt describes the triumphant arrival of Europe's Mars spacecraft at its launch site. The date for shipping the spacecraft to Baikonur gets closer and closer. So many things have to be ready at the same time.
Mars Express, the first European spacecraft to visit the planet Mars, has completed its tests at Toulouse, France. After six months extensive thermal environmental, mechanical and electric tests, the spacecraft with the Beagle 2 lander will leave for Baïkonur, Kazakhstan on 19 March 2003 onboard an Antonov 124 aircraft. It will be launched early June 2003 onboard a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket.
A faulty component has set back the launch date for Europe's first ever solo mission to Mars, but project scientists say the delay could in fact be advantageous. The Mars Express spacecraft was scheduled to launch on 23 May from the Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The repair now means the spacecraft is unlikely to take off before 6 June. The launch window extends until 23 June.
THE European Space Agency will formally open its first deep space ground station in Western Australia tomorrow, three years after construction first began. The ESA station and its antenna, which supports a 100-tonne, 35-metre dish at New Norcia, 134km north of Perth, will become part of the agency's global tracking station network. The 40-metre high, 630-tonne antenna will be used to communicate with the ESA's first mission to Mars this year.
Beagle 2 - the robot that will look for signs of life on Mars - has been successfully fitted to its mother ship and is ready for transport to its launch site. The British-led effort to touch down on the Red Planet is part of the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express mission to be launched in May 2003. The robot lander was fitted to the main spacecraft on Thursday and preliminary test results show the fitting went perfectly. Beagle 2 has now been put into storage and will soon be transported to Baikonur, Kazakhstan, for blast-off.
Europe’s mission to Mars has moved a step closer to completion. The Beagle 2 Lander left the UK to travel to Astrium, in Toulouse France on Monday 24 February. Once Beagle 2 reaches it’s destination it will be mated with the Mars Express spacecraft before being shipped to Baikanour, Kazakstahn for launch.
In the fourth instalment of the BBC News Online Mars Express diary, John Reddy describes the race to get Europe's first probe to the Red Planet ready for launch.
A British-built space probe is beginning the first leg of a £110 million mission to search for life on Mars. The Beagle 2 Mars Lander was being shipped to the French city of Toulouse today to join the European Space Agency's Mars Express, ahead of its planned launch in May. Once on the Red Planet, the probe will conduct a series of tests on minerals and rock samples.
The British-built Mars lander, Beagle 2, is about to leave home on the first leg of its journey to the Red Planet. It will be shipped to southern France to join the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. The main spacecraft and the lander are set to take off from the Russian spaceport at Baikonur in May or June.
A British-led space expedition will this weekend complete a revolutionary landing craft that could finally prove the existence of life on Mars. Technicians working on the ambitious project, branded mission impossible when it was first proposed in 1997, are expected to complete final preparations on the Beagle 2 lander following just two years of development. A collaborative effort between a consortium of univer sities, research support units and industry, the team's leaders are confident the spectacular launch will restore the UK's reputation as a leading light of scientific discovery.
The IoS interview: Colin Pillinger, professor of planetary science and inventor of Beagle 2. The year is 1956, and in an ordinary house near Bristol, a boy named Colin Pillinger hunches over the family radio to listen to that week's episode of Journey into Space. Nearby lies a copy of the Eagle comic, its cover telling the latest instalment of Dan Dare, spaceman.
With the planets aligning just right, the European Space Agency is moving forward with plans to launch the Mars Express in June – a precursor to manned missions to the red planet. Later this month, a British-made lander known as the Beagle 2 is scheduled to be delivered to the European Space Agency's primary contractor for the Mars Express spacecraft.
A year from now, a European spacecraft should arrive at the Red Planet. Mars Express will orbit the fourth planet and drop off a robot to explore its rocky red surface. BBC News Online talks to David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency (Esa), about the mission. This time next Christmas, a small robot, built in Britain, should be exploring the rocky surface of Mars.
British experts have put on display a robot lander that could settle one of the most pressing questions in space science today: whether life, or the potential for it, exists on Mars. The probe, Beagle 2, will be placed aboard a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, Mars Express, which is scheduled to blast off from Russia's Baikonur launchpad in Kazakhstan next May 23. If all goes well, exactly one year from now the mother ship will drop off its tiny golden baby as it finally nears the Red Planet.
British scientists are putting the finishing touches to Beagle 2, the robot that will look for signs of life on Mars. In about a year's time it should be exploring the surface of the Red Planet.
The smallest and most sophisticated spacecraft of its type ever designed was being packed up yesterday in readiness for its mission to search for life on Mars next year. Scientists at the Open University in Milton Keynes were preparing to close the lid on the Beagle 2 landing craft, which weighs a little more than its canine namesake and is the size of a bicycle wheel.
The Mars Express prime contractor and the Mars Express ESA Project Manager have agreed the final delivery date for the Beagle 2 Mars lander with the Beagle team. The British-led lander will be delivered to the prime contractor (Astrium SAS) in Toulouse,for final integration with the Mars Express spacecraft on 30 January 2003.
The University of Leicester has successfully completed construction and test of the flight Model PAW, the 'eyes and hand' of the Beagle 2 Mars lander. The Beagle 2 project aims to send a UK-led lander to Mars in December 2003 as part of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Mission, due for launch at the end of May 2003. The robotic lander, controlled remotely from Earth, will sample the soil, rocks and atmosphere of Mars in its search for signs of past and present life. In addition it will examine the detailed geology and environment of the landing site (Isidis Planitia).
On the big day, no human eyes will see it. It will make art history, but there will be no campaign to prevent it leaving the country. Its final gallery will be windy, freezing and lit by two moons. And the spot painting - a colour calibration chart destined for a scientific experiment - will put Damien Hirst on the map as never before. It will be the first commissioned design, aboard the first British lander, ever to touch down upon another planet.
Damien Hirst, the British artist who pickled a shark and displayed sliced livestock preserved in formaldehyde, is heading for outer space. On Thursday Hirst unveiled his latest creation — a tiny painting commissioned as part of a Martian mission. The palm-sized artwork, a miniature version of one of Hirst's multicolored "spot paintings," is to be aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission next year.
Briton Damien Hirst, famed for pickling dead animals in formaldehyde, is hoping to boldly go where no artist has gone before after unveiling a tiny painting to be carried to Mars. The spot painting, which doubles as an instrument calibration chart, will be carried on the Beagle 2 spacecraft, which is scheduled to fly to Mars by December 2003.
The Ferrari Red Paint will not be the only thing breaking all speed records when it hurtles towards the Red Planet on-board the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003. The spacecraft itself has already broken some speed records of its own. Mars Express is the fastest-built satellite of its type in the history of space engineering. The unique way in which ESA drove the Mars Express project cut the amount of time from the original concept to actually putting contractors to work from the usual five years to just one year. Moreover, two years were shaved off the design and building phase - cutting it from the usual six to four years. However, there has been no compromise on the quality of the mission.
Europe's first voyage to the Red Planet is due to leave Earth next year for a Christmas rendezvous. The European Space Agency's Don McCoy explains the tests needed to prepare the craft for its hazardous journey in the first of a series of diaries for BBC News Online.
Britain's attempt to send a space mission to Mars next year passed a major milestone yesterday when scientists successfully tested the parachute that will allow the craft, Beagle 2, to land safely on the Red Planet. The white nylon canopy, said to be the most efficient created, was attached to a metal weight and hurled from a balloon 350 ft above a Shropshire airfield. Fluttering in the dawn sunshine, it floated slowly to the ground.
A simulated Mars landing took place at a remote airfield in Shropshire, England, at dawn on Friday, in a crucial last test for the UK's first Martian probe. The trial run tested the parachute that will slow the Beagle 2's rapid descent to the red planet's surface. It was a success, with a dummy payload safely carried to the ground from a height of 90 metres. A prototype of the unique parachute design underwent testing in Arizona in September, but Friday's experiment tested the final design.
Final tests are being conducted on the main parachute that will carry a European lander down on to the surface of Mars next year. The chute will help slow the descent of Beagle 2 after it is jettisoned from the main probe, Mars Express, which will go into orbit around the Red Planet. The parachute has been designed by famous balloonist Per Lindstrand from a special nylon - a very much lighter material than that used to make normal chutes on Earth.
Final testing of a Shropshire-built parachute for a space probe to Mars was taking place early today. The parachute - made by Oswestry's Lindstrand Balloons - was dropped from a balloon 300ft above Sleap Airfield, near Wem. Attached to it was a weight equivalent to the revolutionary Beagle 2 space probe. The probe was developed by Astrium, the prime contractor for the international project to land on the Red Planet and search for life.
The British scientists building the lander they hope will explore the surface of Mars have vowed to have their robotic probe ready for launch, amid concerns over the project's financial status. The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch Mars Express, Europe's first ever mission to the red planet, in June 2003. This will carry the lander, called Beagle 2, as well as an array of analytical instruments that will be deployed in orbit around Mars.
A race is on to finish building a British spacecraft in time for the first European mission to Mars. Engineers are working extra hours on Beagle 2, amid concern the project is running over budget and behind schedule. It would be a major embarrassment to the UK if the craft - designed to land on the Red Planet - was left on the launch pad when the primary vehicle, Mars Express, blasts off early next year. David Southwood, Director of Science at the European Space Agency (Esa), said the Mars Express probe would take-off with or without Beagle.
The symbol of Ferrari's extraordinary success, its red paint 'Rosso Corsa', has been given the green light to go into space, as it was declared officially 'space qualified' at a formal ceremony held today at INTESPACE in Toulouse, France. A specially constructed glass globe, known as FRED, containing the sample of paint was then integrated on to the Mars Express spacecraft, in readiness for the fastest journey Ferrari has ever made. The sample of red paint is due to begin its trip to the Red Planet on-board the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in May/June 2003.
Ferrari has proved itself to be the best racing team on Earth and now it is headed for Mars. A blob of the mark's famous red paint sealed inside a tiny glass globe is to travel to the fourth planet on Europe's Mars Express mission. The link with Ferrari marks a new move by Esa to get more Europeans interested in space. David Southwood, the director of science at Esa, said Europe would be going to nine celestial bodies in the next decade. "This is a serious programme and Mars will open the door," he said.
EDS today announced its collaborative product development product lifecycle management (PLM) software has driven the design of the Entry, Descent and Lander System (EDLS) for the Beagle 2 Mars lander, which will carry the principal experiments payload in next year’s European Space Agency Mars Express space mission. The Mars Express spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, in May 2003 atop a Soyuz/Fregat rocket for its six month journey to the red planet. On board the Mars Express will be the Beagle 2 lander, named to celebrate Charles Darwin’s voyage, which led to the writing of On The Origin Of Species. Beagle 2’s mission is to search for signs of life on Mars and to conduct geochemical/atmospheric analyses. Beagle 2 is a UK-led project operating as a joint academia/industry consortium and is steered through the mutual cooperation of the Open University, the University of Leicester and Astrium Limited -- formerly known as Matra Marconi Space (UK).
Mars Express, to be launched in May-June 2003 on its six-month journey to Mars, is presently being put through a test campaign at INTESPACE, Toulouse, France. The spacecraft, which will be undertaking Europe's first mission to the Red Planet, is to be presented at a special press event being held in Toulouse on 18 September. Media representatives are invited to INTESPACE on Wednesday 18 September to learn about the mission and attend a ceremony at which a container filled with Ferrari's distinctive 'Rosso Corsa' red paint will be integrated with the spacecraft.
Of all missions sent to Mars only one, the Viking 26 years ago, has dared to search for life. Its only conclusive result was that finding proof of extraterrestrial life proved to be much harder than expected. Second attempts never followed. Until now. ESA's Mars Express, the next mission to the Red Planet and the first European one, has an ambitious goal. To be launched in 2003, Mars Express will be the first spacecraft after Viking to search for direct and indirect evidence for past or present life on Mars. This time, scientists are equipped with more knowledge and insight in how to detect Martian life. The chances of success look very good.
Ferrari has recently faced some tough challenges on the racetrack, but achieving the qualifications that will allow its famous red paint "Rosso Corsa" to go into space is another story altogether. In July, three test containers of Ferrari's red paint "Rosso Corsa" arrived at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in The Netherlands, in order to be tested in preparation for the journey to the Red Planet on-board Mars Express. Over the following weeks, the red paint sample, safely installed in a specially constructed glass globe 2cm in diameter, nicknamed "Fred", and sunk in a specially designed fibreglass supporting block, has been undergoing a severe testing process.
Taking a leap forward in the study of Mars, European engineers began construction on the Beagle 2, a lander slated to hit the red planet in 2003. The robot craft will probe rocks, dig into the soil and sniff the air, checking for organic matter and other life-related chemical compounds like atmospheric methane. The Beagle 2, named after Charles Darwin's sea ship HMS Beagle, will hitch a ride with the Mars Express, a European Space Agency craft that will orbit the red planet.
Beagle 2, the pioneering Mars lander that is being developed now by the European Space Agency, is to be put together prior to takeoff for the Red Planet at the assembly and testing block at Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russian Aerospace Agency (Rosaviakosmos) disclosed Tuesday. "Mars-bound Mars Express probe carrying that lander is scheduled to be launched in May/June 2003 with the aid of the Russian Soyuz FG launch vehicle from Baikonur Cosmodrome," the space agency clarified. "The probe's landing on the Red Planet is scheduled for the end of next year," Rosaviakosmos added.
A joint UK and European mission to find evidence of life on Mars took another giant leap forward this week when engineers started assembling the Beagle 2 lander. The build is being carried out in a specially constructed Aseptic Assembly Facility at the Open University, in Milton Keynes.
In May next year, Europe will embark on its first mission to explore the Red Planet. The stakes are high - Mars Express aims to detect water under the Martian soil and look for signs of life, living or dead. With a 167m euro price tag, for the space craft alone, scientists cannot afford to make mistakes. The European Space Agency is beginning a barrage of final tests to qualify its craft to enter space. The manager of the assembly and testing phase of the mission, Don McCoy, says a crucial milestone was reached this week.
What is the fastest Ferrari's distinctive red paint has ever travelled? Next year it will be 10,800 km/h! Mars Express, to be launched in May/June 2003, the first European spacecraft to visit the Red Planet, will be speeding on its way accompanied by the very essence of Ferrari: a sample of its distinctive red paint.
Final assembly work on the British-designed Mars lander, Beagle 2, has begun. The craft is being assembled at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. "It's a momentous day because you're starting with the building of something you know will eventually end up on Mars," the OU's Professor Colin Pillinger told BBC News Online at the Farnborough International Air Show. Beagle 2 will hitch a ride on the European Space Agency's Mars Express.
Bad weather on Mars could force a detour for the British-led effort to land on the planet. Scientists want to change the point of touchdown of the Beagle 2 craft to reduce the risk of a crash landing. Evidence has emerged of strong gusts of wind on the Martian surface in the landing zone, a giant basin north of the planet's equator.
The climate models formulated by ESA scientists show us the pattern of the storms throughout the Martian year, but the mystery remains why some years are dustier than others. Mars Express, the ESA mission to the Red Planet that is due to arrive in December 2003, will be sending back data that could help us solve this mystery and perfect our weather maps of Mars. The mission has been timed to arrive at Mars at the end of the Martian winter in the northern hemisphere, making it highly unlikely that there is a dust storm at the time of arrival.
Scientists at the University of Leicester's Space Research Centre are recreating the hostile environment found on Mars in their laboratory, with a device known as the Martian Environment Simulator (MES). The machine reproduces the temperature, air pressure and unbreathable atmosphere known to exist on Mars. The MES is currently being used to test equipment on the Beagle 2 lander, part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express Spacecraft and due to arrive on Mars during Christmas 2003.
The Wellcome Trust biomedical research charity has agreed to help finance the mass spectrometer which is central to Beagle 2 and is being pioneered by the group at the Open University led by Beagle 2 Lead Scientist Professor Colin Pillinger. The Trust is providing £2.6m to pay for construction of the miniature instrument and to investigate how the technology may be extended beyond that developed for a mission to Mars.
British researchers have recreated the hostile Martian atmosphere in a box the size of a desktop computer, in order to help test equipment for an upcoming mission to the red planet. Scientists from Leicester University have reproduced the low temperature, pressure, and unbreathable atmosphere found on the planet to put the Beagle 2 landing craft through its paces before it leaves to search for signs of life on Mars next May. "We are emulating the environmental conditions on Mars," Derek Pullan, Instrument Manager for the Beagle 2 project, told Reuters on Thursday. "It is important to test the instruments and see if they can accurately function on the surface."
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The presence of such a large amount of water ice under Mars's surface is very surprising. Especially so close to the surface!" says Gerhard Schwehm, Head of the Planetary Missions Division at ESA. The team working on ESA's Mars Express, the next mission to the Red Planet, is thrilled by NASA's Mars Odyssey detection of hydrogen-rich layers under the Martian surface. This hydrogen indicates the presence of water ice in the top surface of the Martian soil in a large region surrounding the planet's south pole. ESA's Mars Express, ready for launching in June 2003, has the tools for searching much deeper below the surface, down to a few kilometres. "Mars Express will give a more global picture of where the water is and how deep," says Patrick Martin, ESA deputy project scientist for the Mars Express mission.
UK scientists say they could win the race to find proof of life on Mars, following reports that new signs of water have been detected. A British-led effort will get the first chance next year to dig for evidence.
Britain's project to land a probe to look for life on Mars next year has received a big boost in the form of a £2.6m grant. The money comes from the Wellcome Trust, the medical research charity which has funded a large portion of the Human Genome Project. The cash will go towards developing a miniature mass spectrometer, one of the instruments the Beagle 2 lander will need to search for signs of past or present life. The director of the Wellcome Trust says that building the instrument could lead to extremely useful medical spin-offs.
Next year, a set of complex, temperamental and hugely expensive scientific instruments will be strapped to the top of a rocket and violently shaken as they are launched into space. Six months later, they will be hurled into the atmosphere of Mars at 14,000mph. Cushioned by balloons, they will bounce to the surface, roll to a stop and then switch themselves on without, it is hoped, a single glitch. The scientists behind the Beagle 2 project have spent the past few weeks making sure that those vibrations, knocks and shakes will not scupper their £30 million project to send a British probe to Mars in search of evidence of life. The British team has less than 10 months to finish Beagle 2. The probe must be delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA) by next January.
Europe is to reopen the space race by launching one of the fastest spacecraft so far for a landing on a melting comet. The mission is part of a series to demonstrate Europe's growing challenge to US domination in space. One will look at the origins of the universe, another seek planets similar to earth. The most ambitious will land on Mars to seek the top prize - confirmation of alien life. One of the most dramatic will be the launch next January of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to Comet Wirtanen. After its launch, Rosetta will orbit Earth twice and Mars once, using their gravitational pull to match the comet's speed of up to 134,400k/mh. Once it has caught up with Wirtanen, it will drop a lander on the surface, then follow the comet towards the sun. Scientists hope Rosetta will provide some of the most exciting pictures since the US landed on the moon 33 years ago. The space race will accelerate four months later when ESA and NASA, the US space agency, send missions to Mars within a few days of one another. Three spacecraft - one European and two US - should arrive at Mars about Christmas 2003.
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Are dark spots that appear near the south pole of Mars in early spring, a sign of life on the Red Planet? No-one can say for sure, according to a group of scientists who met at ESTEC, ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands. But the spots are certainly fascinating, the meeting agreed, and well worth a detailed look by Mars Express, the European Space Agency's Mars mission, when it goes into orbit around the Red Planet in late 2003. Agustin Chicarro, ESA project scientist for Mars Express, called the meeting after the spots began fuelling controversy here on Earth last summer. "As a geologist, I found the spots quite perplexing and very exciting. I wanted to tap a broad spectrum of expert opinion to decide whether they warrant closer examination by Mars Express," he said.
THE man most likely to answer the question "Is there life on Mars?" is not a Nasa scientist in a Houston laboratory but a 58-year-old, wild-haired professor who keeps cows on a farm in Cambridgeshire. Prof Colin Pillinger is the mastermind behind Britain's first space probe, Beagle 2, which is due to land on Mars on December 23, 2003, and spend six months analysing Martian rocks, soil and gases for signs that the planet ever supported life. It is only Prof Pillinger's enthusiasm and implacable faith that have turned into reality his academic obsession with the search for life on Mars. He is a specialist in analysing rocks from other planets and has extensively studied Martian meteorites.
Fans of British pop band Blur always thought their music was out of this world. Now it really will be. A musical sequence recorded by the mega-selling foursome will herald the arrival of a British space probe on Mars. The track will be beamed back to Earth when the probe, Beagle 2, lands on the Red Planet in December 2003. It is part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission to find proof of life on Mars.
Fans of British pop band Blur always thought their music was out of this world. Now it really will be. A musical sequence recorded by the mega-selling foursome will herald the arrival of a British space probe on Mars. The track will be beamed back to Earth when the probe, Beagle 2, lands on the Red Planet in December 2003. It is part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission to find proof of life on Mars.
Aarhus University is set to play a central role in plans by the European space agency, ESA, to launch its first mission to the surface of Mars in 2003. The university is behind a project to develop equipment used on the Mars Express expedition and has now opened its new Mars laboratory, where it will carry out testing of the equipment needed for the mission to the red planet. One of the first pieces of equipment to undergo research was ‘Beagle 2’, the landing module which will probe the surface of the planet. Tests in Aarhus are carried out in a wind tunnel, where fine dust grains are added to the air. The scientists will be able to determine how the dust storms on the planet influence the solar panels that produce power for the module.
The H.M.S. Beagle set sail from Britain late in the stormy December of 1831, bearing the young naturalist Charles Darwin on a quest to understand the natural history of the farthest lands humans could reach. One hundred and seventy two years later, the UK's Open and Leicester Universities, together with Astrium, an Aerospace Industry partner, aims to reach a bit farther: to Mars. Beagle 2, a compact, lightweight lander carried on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express, will search for signs of life on the red planet.
If you live in Europe, there's almost certainly a research institute or industrial company near you that is contributing materials or expertise to Mars Express, Europe's first mission to the Red Planet. Under the umbrella of the European Space Agency, at least 25 companies from 15 European countries are building hardware or software for the spacecraft, or otherwise contributing their expertise; and more than 200 scientists from research institutes in all ESA member states and beyond are contributing towards the scientific payload. "The Mars Express project is providing about 1