Beagle 2

Model of the Beagle 2 at the Spaceport museum in Seacombe, Merseyside, depicting the spacecraft in a state similar to the way it was found in 2015

Beagle 2 was conceived by a group of British academics headed by Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University in collaboration with the University of Leicester. The project was designed and developed by several UK academics and companies.[8] The spacecraft's name reflects its goal of searching for signs of past or present life on Mars.[9] According to Pillinger:

"HMS Beagle was the ship that took [Charles] Darwin on his voyage around the world in the 1830s and led to our knowledge about life on Earth making a real quantum leap. We hope Beagle 2 will do the same thing for life on Mars."

A 50 by 8 kilometres (31.1 by 5.0 mi) ellipse centered on 11.53°N 90.50°E / 11.53; 90.50 at Isidis Planitia, an enormous, flat, sedimentary basin that overlies the boundary between the ancient highlands and the northern plains of Mars, was chosen as the landing site.[9] The lander was expected to operate for about 180 days and an extended mission of up to one Martian year (687 Earth days) was thought possible. The Beagle 2 lander's objectives were to characterise the landing site geology, mineralogy, geochemistry, and oxidation state of the physical properties of the atmosphere and surface layers; collect data on Martian meteorology and climate; and search for biosignatures.

The principal investigator, Colin Pillinger, set up a consortium to design and build Beagle 2. The principal members and their initial responsibilities were:[10]

• Open University – Consortium leader & scientific experiments
• University of Leicester – Project management, Mission management, Flight Operations Team, instrument management, and scientific experiments
  

  Colin Pillinger, leader of the Beagle 2 project, pictured in 2009
• Astrium – Main industrial partner
• Martin-Baker – Entry, descent and landing system
• Logica – Cruise, entry, descent and landing software
• SCISYS – Ground segment and lander software
• University of Wales, Aberystwyth – Robotic arm
• McLaren Applied Technologies - composite materials for the solar panels[11]

Astrium took over responsibility for program management, and Leicester assumed responsibility for mission management which involved the preparations for the operations post launch and the operations control centre.

In an effort to publicise the project and gain financial support, its designers sought and received the endorsement and participation of British artists. The mission's call-sign was composed by the band Blur,[12] and the 'test card' (Calibration Target Plate) intended for calibrating Beagle 2's cameras and spectrometers after landing was painted by Damien Hirst.

The Lander Operations Control Center (LOCC), from which the spacecraft was to be controlled, was located at the National Space Centre in Leicester and was visible to the public visiting the centre. The control centre included operational systems for controlling Beagle 2, analysis tools for processing engineering and scientific telemetry, virtual reality tools for preparing activity sequences, communications systems, and the Ground Test Model (GTM). The GTM was composed of builds of the Beagle 2 systems, collected together to provide a full set of lander electronics. The GTM was used nearly continuously to validate the engineering and science commands, rehearse the landing sequence, and validate the onboard software.[13]

Visual Monitoring Camera image of Beagle 2 as it heads off to Mars

Beagle 2's landing site was a 174 by 106 km (108 by 66 mi) landing ellipse within Isidis Planitia basin.[17]

Mars Express was launched from Baikonur on 2 June 2003[12] at 17:45 UTC. Beagle 2 was initially mounted on the top deck of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.[12] It was released from the orbiter on a ballistic trajectory towards Mars on 19 December 2003. Beagle 2 coasted for six days after release and entered the Martian atmosphere at about 20,000 km/h (12,000 mph). Its expected landing was on 2:54 UT on 25 December. The lander was protected from the heat of entry by a heat shield coated with NORCOAT, an ablating material made by EADS. Compression of the Martian atmosphere and radiation from the hot gas are estimated to have led to a peak heating rate of around 100 W/cm².

After deceleration in the Martian atmosphere, parachutes deployed and at about 200 metres (660 ft) above the surface, large airbags inflated around the lander to protect it when it hit the surface. Landing occurred at about 02:45 UTC on 25 December 2003.

After analysis of the imagery obtained in 2015, it has been conjectured after landing, the bags deflated and the top of the lander opened. These images suggest at most only two of the four solar panels were deployed. A signal was supposed to be sent to Mars Express after landing and another the next (local) morning to confirm Beagle 2 survived the landing and the first night on Mars. A panoramic image of the landing area was then supposed to be taken using the stereo camera and a pop-up mirror, after which the lander arm would have been released. The lander arm was to dig up samples to be deposited in the instruments for study, and the "mole" would have been deployed, crawling across the surface to a distance of about 3 metres (9.8 ft) from the lander and burrowing under rocks to collect soil samples for analysis.

The British government spent more than £22 million (US$40 million) on Beagle 2, with the remainder of the total £44 million (US$80 million) coming from the private sector.[18]

Although the Beagle 2 craft successfully deployed from the Mars Express, confirmation of a successful landing was not forthcoming. It should have come on 25 December 2003 when Beagle 2 was to have contacted NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft. In the following days, the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank failed to pick up a signal from Beagle 2. The team said they were "still hopeful" of finding a successful return signal.

Attempts were made throughout January and February 2004 to contact Beagle 2 using Mars Express. The first of these occurred on 7 January 2004. Although regular calls were made, hope was placed on communication occurring on 12 January, when Beagle 2 was pre-programmed to expect the Mars Express probe to fly overhead, and on 2 February, when the probe was supposed to resort to the last communication back-up mode, Auto-transmit. No communication was ever established with Beagle 2, which was declared lost on 6 February 2004 by the Beagle 2 Management Board. On 11 February, ESA announced an inquiry into the failure of Beagle 2 would be held.[14] The board of inquiring was unable to find concrete reasons for the probe's failure and listed plausible reasons on the report they released on 24 August 2004.[12]

On 20 December 2005, Pillinger released specially processed images from the Mars Global Surveyor that suggested Beagle 2 had landed in a crater at the landing site on Isidis Planitia.[19] It was claimed the blurry images showed the primary impact site as a dark patch and, a short distance away, Beagle 2 surrounded by the deflated airbags and with its solar panels extended.[20] Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera imaged the area in February 2007 and revealed the crater was empty.[21]

Pillinger speculated[22] higher than expected levels of dust in the Martian atmosphere, which captures heat, caused it to expand and reduce in density so the parachutes were not able to sufficiently slow the probe's descent. This would cause the landing to be too hard, damaging or destroying the probe. A number of other failure hypotheses were produced at the time.[23] If the Martian atmosphere was thinner than expected, the parachute's effectiveness would be reduced and therefore cause the lander to hit the surface with enough speed to destroy it.[23] Turbulence in the atmosphere, which would affect the parachute, was also examined.[23]

Failures in missions to Mars are common. As of 2010, of 38 launch attempts to reach the planet, only 19 had succeeded. Failures are sometimes informally called the Mars Curse.

David Southwood, pictured in 2012. At the time of the Beagle 2 landing, he was Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency.

In May 2004, the report from the Commission of Inquiry on Beagle 2 was submitted to ESA and the UK's science minister Lord Sainsbury.[24] Initially the full report was not published on the grounds of confidentiality but a list of 19 recommendations was announced to the public.

David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science, provided four scenarios of possible failures:[25]

• Beagle 2 entered in atmospheric conditions outside the range assumed by its designers and could have burnt up. The scenario it may have "bounced off into space" was put forward but this does not stand up to close technical scrutiny. The amount of dust in the atmosphere often widely varies, changing its density and temperature characteristics. The chosen margins on the design of the heat shield and the thermal loads it can withstand mean the burn-up scenario is unlikely given the steep entry-flight-path angle, the craft could conceivably have left the atmosphere again.[lower-alpha 1]
• Beagle 2's parachute or cushioning airbags failed to deploy or deployed at the wrong time. This is supported by the observation throughout the transfer to Mars, the out-gassing of some substance and subsequent condensation on optical components of the Mars Express spacecraft carrying the Beagle 2 lander was observed. This observation would be consistent with a leak in the gas generators of Beagle 2's airbags;
• Beagle 2's backshell tangled with the parachute, preventing it from opening properly. It is not clear whether the difference in air drag between the probe with the parachute deployed and the back shell of the heat shield is sufficient to guarantee a safe separation distance[lower-alpha 2];
• Beagle 2 became wrapped up in its airbags or parachute on the surface and could not open. Entanglement with the parachute appears plausible because the parachute's strop was shortened from the original design to save mass. Assuming the airbags deployed, Beagle 2 would have bounced off the surface into the descending parachute.[lower-alpha 3]

In addition, further scenarios appeared plausible and consistent with the available body of data:

• Beagle 2 may have jettisoned its airbags before it had come to a complete rest on the surface. For mass and cost reasons, the airbag-jettison device was designed to be triggered by a timer rather than by acceleration sensors that would have discerned when the lander package had stopped moving. Because the landing package of NASA's Spirit rover mission rebounded off the surface in Gusev crater numerous times before coming to a standstill—taking much more time than anticipated—Beagle 2's timer may have been set to a too-short time[lower-alpha 4];
• The parachute deployment sequence was designed to be triggered by three accelerometers. The system was not designed for a "best out of three" logic but the first accelerometer was designed to compute a safe deployment velocity had been reached; this would trigger the parachute deployment sequence, even if the accelerometer readout was faulty.

In February 2005, following comments from the House of Commons Select committee on science and technology, the report was made public and Leicester University independently published a detailed mission report, including possible failure modes and a "lessons learned".[26]

All above hypotheses were disproved in 2015 after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the remains of the lander: pictures show the probe landed safely and started its operations, deploying some of the solar panels before an on-ground failure prevented the full deployment of all panels; this prevented the onboard antenna, hidden under the last solar panel, from gaining visibility to any orbiter, making any form of communication with the lander impossible and leading to mission loss. This status is detailed below.

Overview

Context

Close-up

Discovery images of Beagle 2, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in November and December 2014.[6]

The location of Beagle 2 on Mars was unknown from late 2003 to early 2015. On 16 January 2015, more than eleven years after its loss and eight months after Colin Pillinger died,[27] news sources confirmed NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had located the lander,[6][7][28] which is lying on the surface of Isidis Planitia at 11.52879°N 90.43139°E / 11.52879; 90.43139,[4][29][30] about 5 km (3.1 mi) from the planned centre of its landing zone.[8]

On 26 April 2016, new computer vision methods stacked multiple new images together to create a view of the lander.[31] The technique called Super-Resolution Restoration (SRR) allows improvement in resolution by taking multiple views then intensively processing them.[32] At the time, it took up to four days on the fastest-available computers to compute one improved image from five 1,000-by-2,000-pixel images.[32]

Further use of some features of the Beagle 2 mission design have been proposed for other mission concepts:[38]

• Beagle 2007[38]
• Beagle 2e Evolution[38] (Beagle 3)
• BeagleNet (multiple Beagles and a mini-rover)[38]
• Beagle to the Moon[39]
• ARTEMIS (multiple small Mars landers)[38]
• MARGE[38] (reuse an instrument)

Beagle 2's PLUTO mole was noted in the development of InSight's Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), an instrument that also uses a self-digging arm.[40]

• ExoMars – Astrobiology programme
  • Schiaparelli EDM – A Mars landing demonstration system
  • Rosalind Franklin (rover) – Planned Mars rover, part of ExoMars programme
• Life on Mars – Scientific assessments on the microbial habitability of Mars
• List of missions to Mars
• Viking landers – Pair of NASA landers and orbiters sent to Mars in 1976
  • Viking lander biological experiments
• List of artificial objects on Mars
• Exploration of Mars – Overview of the exploration of Mars

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Beagle 2.

• Official website
• Beagle 2 by ESA (2003 archive)
• Beagle 2 by NASA (2004 archive)
• Beagle 2 by BBC News
• Mars Express Operations by ESA