Thanks to the observations of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the U.K. may have spotted their long lost Red Planet lander they assumed to be destroyed.
According to BBC News, the Beagle2 robot is believed to have surfaced in new high-resolution images from the MRO. The Beagle2 attempted to land on Mars on Dec. 25, 2003 and has not been seen since.
It attempted the landing with what equated to parachutes and airbags, and mission managers assumed the attempt went awry and the robot was obliterated on impact.
"I am delighted that Beagle 2 has finally been found on Mars," Mark Sims, a prominent Beagle2 mission manager from the University of Leicester, said in a press release. "Every Christmas Day since 2003 I have wondered what happened to Beagle 2. My Christmas Day in 2003 alongside many others who worked on Beagle 2 was ruined by the disappointment of not receiving data from the surface of Mars. To be frank I had all but given up hope of ever knowing what happened to Beagle 2. The images show that we came so close to achieving the goal of science on Mars."
He could only speculate why the Beagle2 probe appeared to be intact after 11 years of inactivity, yet was not detectable after its landing attempt.
"Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," Sims told BBC News. "The failure cause is pure speculation, but it could have been, and probably was, down to sheer bad luck - a heavy bounce perhaps distorting the structure as clearances on solar panel deployment weren't big; or a punctured and slowly leaking airbag not separating sufficiently from the lander, causing a hang-up in deployment."
