Search for Beagle 2 Lander
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Search for Beagle 2 Lander
ESP_024618_1920  Science Theme: Future Exploration/Landing Sites
This is the twelfth image from HiRISE in the part of Isidis basin where the British Beagle 2 spacecraft was supposed to land around Christmas time of 2003.

All contact was lost after its separation from the Mars Express spacecraft six days before atmospheric entry. The lack of telemetry on its 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. EDL was probably not nominal, but perhaps the spacecraft did land correctly and failure occurred for some other reason.

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. For an idea of what the Beagle 2 hardware might look like, see this web page.

The easiest thing to spot would be the bright parachute, if it actually deployed. The parachutes are still easy to spot at the MER and Pathfinder landing sites, so dust deposition over the past eight years probably would not disguise the bright feature over equatorial regions of Mars. At high latitudes the brightness patterns are reset each winter by the seasonal deposits of carbon-dioxide and dust, as seen at the Phoenix landing site. However, beware of bright cosmic-ray hits.

EDL on Mars is difficult! Only the United States has succeeded, with Viking 1, Viking 2, Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, and Phoenix. The 1999 Mars Polar lander was a failure, as was Beagle 2 and six landing attempts by the former Soviet Union. One of the Soviet landers, Mars 3, made it to the surface and transmitted some data or noise for 20 seconds before failure. We haven't been able to locate any of the Soviet lander hardware from HiRISE images.

Searching for this hardware is like looking for a needle in a really big haystack, and we don't know what the needle looks like. In August 2012 NASA will attempt to land the biggest rover ever sent to Mars, MSL or Curiosity. HiRISE will attempt to image MSL during descent, as it did for Phoenix, and after what is hopefully a successful landing.



Written by: Alfred McEwen  (13 December 2011)
 
Acquisition date
27 October 2011

Local Mars time
14:26

Latitude (centered)
11.707°

Longitude (East)
90.605°

Spacecraft altitude
278.2 km (172.9 miles)

Original image scale range
28.0 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects ~84 cm across are resolved

Map projected scale
25 cm/pixel and North is up

Map projection
Equirectangular

Emission angle
7.4°

Phase angle
43.5°

Solar incidence angle
36°, with the Sun about 54° above the horizon

Solar longitude
21.3°, Northern Spring

For non-map projected images
North azimuth:  97°
Sub-solar azimuth:  4.5°
JPEG
Black and white
map projected  non-map

IRB color
map projected  non-map

Merged IRB
map projected

Merged RGB
map projected

RGB color
non-map projected

JP2
Black and white
map-projected   (796MB)

IRB color
map-projected   (389MB)

JP2 EXTRAS
Black and white
map-projected  (352MB)
non-map           (436MB)

IRB color
map projected  (138MB)
non-map           (344MB)

Merged IRB
map projected  (209MB)

Merged RGB
map-projected  (201MB)

RGB color
non map           (335MB)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
B&W label
Color label
Merged IRB label
Merged RGB label
EDR products
HiView

NB
IRB: infrared-red-blue
RGB: red-green-blue
About color products (PDF)

Black & white is 5 km across; enhanced color about 1 km
For scale, use JPEG/JP2 black & white map-projected images

USAGE POLICY
All of the images produced by HiRISE and accessible on this site are within the public domain: there are no restrictions on their usage by anyone in the public, including news or science organizations. We do ask for a credit line where possible:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

POSTSCRIPT
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.