[Goober5000]

This is momentous news.  Beagle 2 has been found, intact, on the surface of Mars.  It made a soft landing only 5km from the center of the landing ellipse -- practically a bullseye in planetary landing terms.  Unfortunately, it only deployed 3 out of 5 petals... which meant that its antenna was blocked and it could not contact Earth.

A belated hearty congratulations to the United Kingdom, the first European country to soft-land a spacecraft on the surface of another planet.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Beagle-2_lander_found_on_Mars
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30784886
http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/16/lost-beagle-2-spacecraft-found-on-mars/

[Flipside]

I just wish that Prof. Pillinger was still alive and could know this, I think it would have made him a happier man, he got a lot of stick over the 'failure' of the Beagle 2.

[Blue Lion]

This is how science fiction movies start

[StarSlayer]

I wonder if they could drive Curiosity over to lend a helping mechanical hand?

That would be pretty epic if it could just unfold the remaining panels and get Beagle working

[Mongoose]

Sucks that it came so close to being completely successful, but at least it's nice to know that it landed in one piece.

[Goober5000]

This is how science fiction movies start

Those blasted Decepticons...

I wonder if they could drive Curiosity over to lend a helping mechanical hand?

That would be pretty epic if it could just unfold the remaining panels and get Beagle working

Aside from the fact that Curiosity has its own mission to accomplish, it is entirely too far away.

[Dragon]

Good thing they found it before Take On: Mars got released. Now they can change it to the actual location (and configuration) of the lander.

Besides that, if any future rover ever comes across Beagle, it could inspect it. It could provide some insight about long-term influence of Martian environment on human technology. It's been there for quite a while.

[jr2]

How hard would it be to send a probe with the single purpose of getting the panels unfurled and perhaps sweeping the dust off of them?  Attach it to another mission and just drop the repair drone on the way.

[headdie]

in terms of technical relative difficulty not that hard.  the problem is it would be subject to the same failure rates as any other mars lander mission and it would be just as costly as even attached to another mission you still have to get the recovery mission up there.

With everything involved you might as well launch a new mission to do the same job as Beagle 2 as you can probably expand on the capabilities of the probe at the same time

[Dragon]

Also, sending stuff to Mars is expensive. Especially if you're going to have it enter orbit (Soviets tried not doing that and their only lander to make it worked for 15 seconds). Not to mention landing accuracy. A probe like this would have to be mobile, because you can make it end up in general vicinity of Beagle 2, but nowhere close enough to actually reach it with a robotic arm (and even if you managed to land "on top" of Beagle, the landing rocket exhaust would likely damage it).

[jr2]

I meant more along the lines of include it with a package already headed there and just drop it from orbit at the appropriate place and then have the primary mission continue to do its thing whilst the repair bot made an attempt to salvage Beagle 2 from being a total loss.  I mean... you'd need, what, a battery that lasted for a week or two and a robotic arm and 4wd, right?

[Dragon]

You also need an antenna. Batteries are heavy, too (solar panels, like on Sojourner, might be a better choice), and a robotic arm isn't as simple as it seems. Neither is the drive. It sounds simple, but when you start considering the environment it's gonna be operating in, it suddenly stops to be. Also, every kilogram is very expensive on a mission to Mars, even more than on a LEO one. You'd usually want to use your payload capacity fully when planning the "primary" mission anyway, the missions are already taking very large rockets such as Atlas V, and the next might have enough mass for an entire Delta IV Heavy. I'd expect a rover like what you're proposing to have mass comparable to Sojourner with a MER-type robotic arm, and that's not even counting the lander hardware, heatshield and everything...

[jr2]

Hmm.  As far as antenna, it might be easier to just program in the Beagle 2's specs and have it locate the beagle using the stars.  Of course, that's a whole nother can 'o worms.  Meh.  I guess Beagle's a loss.    Should've put in a secondary antenna not buried in the solar panels. 

[Dragon]

It would certainly not be easier to automate it. Indeed, that would be a task requiring a "real" AI (comparable to a human in many areas), because we don't even know how things look up close on the Beagle. Locating the Beagle is one thing, actually unfolding it is another. Not to mention you need to approach very precisely, star navigation isn't gonna do it. I highly doubt that a computer would even be able to identify the lander by itself. You'll need either a human or a human-like AI. Antenna dimensions (and required power) could be reduced in case of using a relay of some sort (such as the lander) or being controlled from Mars (by a future manned expedition), but the former would add further weigh and the latter is a distant prospect.

[Colonol Dekker]

The traveller did it....

[headdie]

as a Brit I would love to see Beagle 2 doing its thing but in both science and engineering there is a point where something is not worth doing because it is not practical at this time and I think most if the pro "Get Beagle 2 going again" argument here is sentimentality.

Dont throw good money after bad, the time and cost taken to engineer and deploy the recovery operation would would be similar if not more than what would be needed to build a new "Find Life on Mars" mission except the new mission would benefit from instrumentation designed over a decade later.

[Mongoose]

Dont throw good money after bad, the time and cost taken to engineer and deploy the recovery operation would would be similar if not more than what would be needed to build a new "Find Life on Mars" mission except the new mission would benefit from instrumentation designed over a decade later.

Precisely.  Much better to put those efforts into a brand-new lander that could do more science.

[Dragon]

Or a rover. Landers are much more limited in their capabilities than rovers, they were good early on, but since we now have vehicles that can do everything those early landers did, and do it in multiple places, there's no good reason to send a static lander (except as a base for human exploration, that is). As a gimmick, a passing rover could take a shot as unfolding Beagle 2, but that's it.

[karajorma]

Meh, send humans. Instead of needing a specialised robot just to make Beagle work a human could do the necessary tasks in a spacewalk or two plus do a whole lot more.

[Dragon]

Well, that'd be the best way for many reasons. But seeing that our government prefer to waste money over petty squabbles instead of working together for the good of mankind, it'll take a while before that gets done. If US, Russian  and Chinese politicians prioritized their respective space agencies instead of armies, we'd likely have landed on Europa by now...

Space X could do it one day, their Mars plans surely look interesting. But since they don't have (and never had before) an LV big enough, it's still gonna be a while before it happens anywhere beside in Musk's dreams. Still, they're our best chance of actually going to Mars someday.

And yeah, a human expedition could definitely do a lot more. If equipped with a long-range vehicle (ideally a flyer of some sort) they could go around checking out old landers, probing every interesting-looking rock and making much more science than we'll ever do with rovers.