British Spacecraft Starts Final Leg of Mars Probe

[Hum]

LONDON (Reuters) - A British spacecraft the size of an open umbrella began the final leg of its mission to find life on Mars as it successfully broke free on Friday from the mother ship that has carried it 62 million miles from earth.

Beagle 2 parted from the Mars Express rocket and set off alone to cover the remaining distance to the Red Planet, where it should parachute down on Christmas morning and start broadcasting a tune by Britpop band Blur.

In the intervening days, it will be out of touch with earth because the radio it carries is too small to cover the distance.

"We can confirm that we have Beagle 2 separation," said Mike McKay, flight director of the mission, talking to a gathering of scientists in London by video link from the headquarters of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany.

The first sign scientists will have of the success or failure of their project will be when either Mars Express or the U.S. Mars mission rocket Mars Odyssey -- both carrying powerful radios -- enters Mars orbit, antennae straining for the Blur tune.

Back on earth, the scientists will be biting their finger nails and praying in the silent hours after the scheduled landing.

But once they get the signal, emotion will be packed away for the duration as they instruct the probe to get to work.

The lander is packed with state of the art scientific instruments that will scrape, bore and bake samples from the surface of Mars seeking signs that there was once life on the planet.

At its heart is a mass spectrometer used to measure the mass and abundance of atoms and molecules on planetary surfaces.

"This mission is very important indeed to mankind," Sir Patrick Moore, Britain's best known astronomer, said at a gathering of scientists at the Royal Geographical Society.

"If it finds life on Mars, it will prove that it (life) is widespread in the universe." But there are many potential pitfalls, from the dust storms currently swirling over the planet to the early or late deployment of the balloons that should slow the descent of the 75-pound probe through the Martian atmosphere to 40 miles an hour.

Deploy too soon and the tiny probe will be simply blown away. Too late and it will be a heap of scrap metal strewn across the Martian landscape. But if it succeeds it will be a miracle of British improvisation, having taken just six years and $80 million from conception in the southern English town of Milton Keynes to blast off from Russia and landing on Mars.

It will be far cheaper and contain far more science than either of the two U.S. Martian rovers that will be landed from Mars Odyssey in January.

It has an estimated maximum operational life of 180 days before the dust and extremes of temperature on Mars are expected to put it out of action.

Link:

http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?secti...&storyId=807700

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Yeah - all good except for those dust storms that have been whipping up recently - and that thing has no Retros - it's all atmospherically guided.