spacetoday.net: Beagle 2 remains silent

Posted: Mon, Jan 26, 2004, 2:58 PM ET (1958 GMT)
Beagle 2 lander illustration (Beagle 2)

The latest efforts to establish contact with the British Mars lander Beagle 2, which has been silent since its Christmas Day landing, have failed, and project officials are planning a last-ditch effort to revive the spacecraft. Over the last several days both the orbiting Mars Express and Mars Odyssey spacecraft, as well as the groundbased Jodrell Bank radio telescope, attempted to establish communications with Beagle 2, but failed to detect any signals from the lander. The efforts came after a 10-day period of silence that engineers hoped would trigger a new communications mode on the lander that would increase the odds of success. Officials now think that if the spacecraft is indeed alive, its computer system has suffered some kind of failure. In an effort to correct this potential problem, officials will ask NASA to broadcast a command from Mars Odyssey to Beagle 2, instructing the lander to reload its software. If Odyssey is unavailable to do it, the project will ask Mars Express to carry out a similar command when it flies over the landing site next week. However, project members are already looking ahead to a replacement mission that could launch as early as 2007.