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British scientist asks NASA for helping hand to Mars
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  • LONDON (AFP) Aug 24, 2004
    The British scientist who masterminded the ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, which vanished while attempting to land on Mars, said Tuesday he wanted to try again and has asked NASA for a ride to the Red Planet.

    Professor Colin Pillinger said he had written to the US space agency asking whether room might be found for a successor to Beagle on a much larger US mission to Mars due to depart in 2009.

    Speaking at a press conference to unveil an investigation into what went wrong with Beagle 2, which vanished shortly before it landed on Mars on Christmas Day last year, Pillinger said his team was "looking at the future".

    NASA successfully landed a pair of probes on Mars around the same time as Beagle was lost, and is now planning to send a Mars Science Laboratory, a much larger device designed to roam the planet for years.

    "I sent a letter to NASA saying, would you be interested in taking the Beagle 2 lander as a stand-alone package on a rover?" Pillinger said.

    "We're looking at any opportunity and every opportunity."

    He said he had not received a reply "from the top echelons of NASA".

    Pillinger added he had also spoken privately to NASA's space exploration chief Admiral Craig Steidle at the recent Farnborough Air Show.

    The scientist was speaking after the release of a six-month inquiry by Beagle project organisers, which failed to pinpoint why the tiny craft disappeared.

    In May, Pillinger said unusually thin air over the landing site caused by dust storms was the most likely reason behind its presumed destruction.

    This was still a possible reason for the probe's loss, the new report said, explaining that instruments on the Mars Express spacecraft which carried Beagle 2 to the Red Planet showed signs of unusually low atmospheric density.

    However it said that despite rigorous testing, a number of potential systems malfunctions had not been ruled out.

    These included electronic failures, a puncture on one of Beagle's cushioning gas bags, a failure of the craft to deploy its instruments, damage to the heat shield and a broken communications antenna.

    It was also possible, although unlikely, that Beagle 2 unexpectedly hit one of a pair of craters discovered in the predicted landing site, the report said.

    Beagle 2 mission manager Dr Mark Sims told the press conference that he hoped the failure had not simply been one of communications.

    "My nightmare is that Beagle 2 is on the surface of Mars trying to talk to us and there's a broken cable that stops it. That would be soul-destroying," he said.

    The miniature probe had been due to land on Mars on December 25 last year before flipping open like a pocket watch and beginning its work, but it disappeared without trace.

    An earlier report into Beagle's loss criticised severe organisational failures with the mission, which had been intended to search for evidence of life on Mars.




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