Beagle 2 silence 'not good news'
A leading member of the Beagle 2 team admitted today 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.
Professor 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.
Speaking at a news conference at the Open University’s offices in Camden, north London, Prof Wells said: “It’s not good news. It’s a setback.”
But he and other members of the team insisted they were a long way from giving up on finding the probe.
Another search for Beagle 2 using the giant Jodrell Bank telescope in Cheshire to search for a faint direct signal from the probe last night yielded nothing.
A series of further attempts using different radio telescopes, as well as more Odyssey contacts, is planned.
Scientists are also considering transmitting “blind commands” to Beagle 2 via Odyssey which would repeat instructions to the probe to open its lid and unfold its petal-like solar panels.
In addition Nasa scientists are being asked to check there is nothing wrong with Odyssey. The spacecraft’s communications system was temporarily shut down by radiation from a massive solar flare in October.
But the scientists are chiefly pinning their hopes on Beagle 2’s mother ship Mars Express, which has a ten-fold better chance of communicating with Beagle than Odyssey.
The spacecraft is now undergoing a complicated series of manoeuvres designed to put it in a polar orbit around Mars, and will not be brought on line until January 4.
At that time, Mars Odyssey will in any case have to divert attention from Beagle 2 to the first of two American Rovers due to land on Mars on January 4 and 24.
Beagle 2’s chief scientist Professor Colin Pillinger, who conceived the idea of a British landing six years ago, said: “What we now reckon is our best chance of communication is to wait until Mars Express is available for use.
“Mars Express is our primary route of communication. It’s the one we spent most of our time over the last five years testing.
“Really and truly now we’re waiting until January 4 for a really big attempt with Mars Express.”
