Beagle 2. Arse. £45 million damp squib?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/12/24/mars.beagle/index.html

Not good.

[Drake Tungsten]

Let's hope the sweet strain of 'Far Out' comes through soon...

[Snotty]

Professor Colin Pillinger told a press conference Thursday morning the lack of signal does not necessarily mean failure and offered five possible scenarios:

• The spacecraft landed in the wrong place

• The craft's transmitting antenna landed disoriented and cannot fully open

• There is a communications mis-match between NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor and Beagle 2

• A failure during entry descent damaged the spacecraft

Whats the 5th? Aliens shot it down?

[laurentius]

AFAIK its worth £35 million. And its supposed to shut itself down-or go to hibernation- for the first night to reload its batteries. So the next chance for it to start transmitting is about 2200 GMT tonight

[Space05us]

I called this one the other day in a chat room. Some chick was getting all worked up because it was Europe's first mission to Mars. She quoted something as saying that it was built faster and cheaper than most other things of its kind, I told her the American way worked better; longer, harder, very expensive.

edit: I said that an "accident" would happen in order to draw attention to the Europena Space Program.

edit2: I have no idea where Im going with this post.(Im going back to bed)

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Space05us
I told her the American way worked better; longer, harder, very expensive.

Indeed. NASA are the masters of ****ing up europe can't even be compared.

[VetLegion]

Hey, what about the Russkies, they send a probe with a camera and the camera shutter melts so they see a black screen. Took them a while to figure that one too

[Tripledoc]

The positive news (spin) is that the "orbit insertion manoeuvre was a complete success." In fact Mars Express is now spinning around mars.

http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/index.html

[Eli]

Bummer.

[Dinner]

The US loses about half of it's Mars probes but everyone else seems to lose all of their Mars probes.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The US loses about half of it's Mars probes but everyone else seems to lose all of their Mars probes.

How many astronauts does everyone else lose?

[Gatekeeper]

That was a low blow, Osweld.

[Eli]

How many astronauts does everyone else lose?

How many astronauts does everyone else launch?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Osweld


How many astronauts does everyone else lose?

How many astronauts do they fly?

[Az]

Yay! Osweld got pelted by the crowd!