I hadn't realised Colin Pillinger had died. I've found the news oddly affecting considering I never met the guy. :(<p>(For anyone interested in the background to the Beagle2 probe, 'Backroom Boys'[1] includes a great chapter on it, and Prof Pillinger's involvement .)<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British-ebook/dp/B004FN1K48/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backroom-Boys-Secret-Return-British-...</a>
This seems like something right out of The Martian (which I am 75% through reading, and highly recommend) - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the-martian" rel="nofollow">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the-martian</a>
One time in a interview I got asked "If two robots are lost on mars and can't communicate with one another, how do they find each other? - please write a program outlining your thoughts"<p>I just want to be clear it took an actual space agency 11 years to pull this off and the company I interviewed at just backed up data for people.
Part of me hears stuff like this and just goes "let's get Curiosity to motor on over and..."<p>I am kind of hoping that at some point we'll drop a high-speed rover of some sort on Mars. Even if you took 6 months or a year, being able to cover a decent chunk of the planet would be a heck of a capability.
Was it just chance that the cameras would pass over that location, or was fuel spent, or other priorities diverted to discover this? That would be interesting to know, because I somewhat hope someone had to make sure we got these images and answers.
It looks like it might be as simple as one of the solar panels not flipping out to expose the radio. Such bad luck. Really goes to show how many things on a mission like this has to go right.
This is a good 'accidental' postmortem and provides a good example of how to not design a probe. Having many large parts move before radio contact is possible is bad design.<p>I have a new project: compare designs of Martian missions that succeeded, and contrast against those that didn't.
Look north(?) of the probe about 6m. There's a white spot that seems to match the probe.<p>After reading the description regarding incomplete petal opening, it appears that one of the petals separated.
Is there any chance it still works at all? Probably not but I'm just curious. They said the problem was that the antenna was blocked under the solar panel.