What happened to the UK's Beagle 2 Mars probe on
Christmas Day 2003 is once more unclear.
In December 2008, engineers led by Madhat Abdel-Jawad at the
University of Queensland thought they had cracked it when their
simulations showed Beagle 2's gyroscopic spin was too fast for it
to remain stable - so it would have tumbled and burned up in the
Martian atmosphere (New Scientist, 20 December 2008, p 24).
The Beagle 2 team is far from convinced. Arthur Smith of Fluid
Gravity Engineering in Emsworth, Hampshire, UK, says the Australian
team failed to simulate atmospheric entry in a gravity field, or
allow for Beagle 2's offset centre of gravity, meaning the
simulations were flawed. With the parameters set correctly, Smith's
simulations show that Beagle 2 did not tumble.
Smith and colleagues at the Open University and Aerospace firm
EADS Astrium in the UK plan to explain their analysis in a
forthcoming research paper.
Abdel-Jawad and his colleagues are looking forward to reading
it. "All our assumptions were valid over the time of flight we
analysed," he says. "We would be delighted to accept the findings
of the Beagle team's new study if it were found to be valid after
we review their analysis."