[meteorite-list] Beagle 2 Team Still Hopes To Repeat Mars Landing Success

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:57 2004
Message-ID: <200401041900.LAA20007_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.beagle2.com/news/index.htm

Congratulations to NASA. Beagle 2 Team Still Hopes To Repeat
Mars Landing Success.

04-Jan-04 11:23 GMT
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Summary

At a press briefing in London today, Professor Colin Pillinger (Open
University), Beagle lead scientist, and Dr Mark Sims (University of Leicester),
the mission manager, congratulated their colleagues at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory on the successful landing of the Spirit rover on Mars.
 
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Full story

"I'd like to give congratulations to NASA and the Spirit team for getting
the lander down safely," said Professor Pillinger. "We wish them every luck."

Adding his congratulations, Mark Sims said, "I'd like to reiterate the
international cooperation we've been getting in terms of looking for Beagle.
In particular, the JPL team which has been working very strange hours
supporting the Odyssey passes, Lockheed Martin, who've been running the
Odyssey spacecraft, Jodrell Bank, Westerborg, the British Astronomical
Association and Malin Space Science Systems. Mike Malin is looking at
imaging the landing site potentially from tomorrow."

Meanwhile, the search for Beagle 2 goes on.

"We haven't in any shape or form given up on Beagle 2," said Professor
Pillinger.

"We have realised that Mars Express is not in the orbit we originally
expected, so our communication strategy is now different from the one that
we explained at the beginning of last week."

Describing the ongoing work at the Lander Operations Control Centre, Mark
Sims explained that teams from the University of Leicester, SciSys and
Astrium are continuing their efforts to identify possible failure modes
that can be addressed.

"We're still concentrating on both the communications and timing/software
issues, and working our way through the logic and fault tree on the basis
that Beagle 2 is on the surface of Mars and for some reason is failing to
talk to us," said Dr. Sims.

"There are six or seven scenarios that we're still working through and we
still can't eliminate any of those."

However, possible failure scenarios involving a reset of the clock hardware
and a problem with a tilted antenna seem to have been ruled out. Today's
successful transmission of signals from the Spirit rover via Mars Odyssey
also indicates that the radio on board NASA's orbiter is working properly.

Meanwhile, an attempt to send blind commands to Beagle 2 via Mars Odyssey
on 31st December also resulted in no obvious response from the lander.

There has also been no response from the Beagle 2 transceiver during 11
programmed passes. Unfortunately, the last four contact opportunities
pre-programmed into Beagle 2's computer no longer coincide with Mars Express
on its current orbit, so the team is now relying on the spacecraft
switching to various back-up communication modes.

The mission team is now waiting for their little lander to switch to one of
its backup communication modes. Beagle 2 could already be operating in
'communication search mode 1', during which it listens for 80 minutes
during both the Martian day and night in an effort to establish contact
with an available orbiter at Mars Odyssey overflight times.

If no link is established by this method, 'communication search mode 2'
should eventually be activated. The earliest date by which this mode
could become operational was 3rd January. In this mode, the receiver is
on for 59 minutes out of every hour throughout the Martian day, and the
spacecraft sends a carrier signal five times in each daylight hour. During
the Martian night, Beagle 2's receiver will be on for one minute out of
every five, but there is no carrier signal.

Although Mars Odyssey will continue to search for the lander, Mars Express
will soon become the prime communication link with Beagle 2. After reaching
its operational polar orbit today, ESA's orbiter should pass over the
Beagle 2 landing site regularly from 7th January onwards. Various modes of
communication can be attempted during passes by Mars Express, although the
team anticipates starting on 7th and 8th January with the standard 'hail
and command' which has been used with Mars Odyssey.

The first four passes with Mars Express (7th, 8th, 9th and 10th January) are
almost directly over the landing site and only 5 to 8 minutes long, so they
are not ideal for communication, whereas the opportunities on 12th and 14th
January are potentially much longer.
 
Received on Sun 04 Jan 2004 02:00:23 PM PST