I remember the loss of Beagle 2 being a particularly poignant time. The high hopes of my home country were pinned on a small -- and slightly eccentric -- mission to seek out the possibility of life on the Red Planet. But after the 33 kilogram (73 lb) Beagle 2 separated from the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite in Mars orbit six days before atmospheric reentry... silence.
To this day, over eight years later, we still have no clue about what happened to the only British mission to Mars. But with the continuing efforts of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), images of the Martian surface that possibly contain clues of Beagle 2's final resting place are still being beamed back to Earth.
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On Jan. 11, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) team released the twelfth high-res view of Isidis basin, where the lander was intended to land (a portion of which is shown below). But where the mission was intended to land could be wildly different from where it actually landed -- if it "landed" at all.
"The lack of telemetry on (Beagle 2's) way to the surface means there is little information about where the spacecraft may have landed on the surface -- we can only search in the region where it was expected to land if the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence had been nominal," says Alfred McEwen, professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and principal investigator of the HiRISE instrument.
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Using the HiRISE imagery it is hoped that some component from Beagle 2's hardware might be seen. McEwen points out that if it was actually deployed during EDL, Beagle 2's bright parachute should still be visible. The parachutes that landed NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers in 2004 are still visible to this day, regardless of dust build up.
Of course, if the 'chutes weren't deployed, there will likely be a crater surrounded by debris, but looking for any kind of hardware on the Martian surface is "like looking for a needle in a really big haystack, and we don't know what the needle looks like," McEwen adds.
"Nothing resembling the Beagle lander has been seen in any of the HiRISE images, although we aren't sure that they've been thoroughly searched," he said.
If you feel like doing a spot of lost Beagle 2 searching, McEwen gives some instructions about how to do so. Also, in 2007, Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla posted a very handy guide including renderings by Doug Ellison of how Beagle 2's hardware may look in the HiRISE images.
So if you do see something fishy in the HiRISE photos, make sure the feature isn't a cosmic ray hit; we all know how those little blighters can be misinterpreted.
Images: top: A "lost dog" poster featuring the final image of Beagle 2 as it separated from Mars Express on Dec. 19, 2003 (ESA, edited by Ian O'Neill/Discovery News); middle: A section of Isidis basin, part of the search region for Beagle 2 (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).
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