:: W4B photography's companion blog ::

:: Thursday, December 25, 2003 ::

"Hailing Frequencies are open..."
The European Space Agency's probe Beagle2 is scheduled to land on Mars today. It was detached from the Mars Express orbital probe on December 19th on approach to our nearest planetary neighbour. According the Mars Express site, that probe made a successful orbital insertion earlier today ("standard orbit, Mr. Sulu"), but the first signals from Beagle2 on the surface are yet to be acquired. Another probe from NASA called Odyssey which has been in orbit of Mars for some 793 days has been searching for Beagle2 but so far has not located it. The 76m Jodrell Bank radio telescope is tasked to look for the signals this evening GMT time. I often think it is something like a Star Trek level technology that allows a 5 watt transmitter (think like a strong cell phone signal) to be located at a distance of 157.946 Million Km - which is the current Earth-Mars distance.

Carpe Diem

:: Mike Wood 12:17 [+] :: 0 comments
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