Europe's Faster, Cheaper Mars Mission
June 2, 2003 -- It's small, lightweight and simple in design. And European scientists hope it will become the little spaceship that could.
The European Space Agency launched its first mission to Mars today in the form of a disc-like ship carrying a compact lander named the Beagle 2. The robots' main mission is to find signs of life — past or present — on or just under Mars' surface.
The Mars Express mission was put together in record time (five years) and with a humble budget (an estimated $60 million, or nearly eight times less than the production and launch cost of one of NASA's upcoming Mars landers).
In fact, the project's streamlined design and thrift echoes a previous NASA mantra: "faster, better, cheaper." But that slogan, coined by former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, was quickly abandoned after the back-to-back failures of a NASA Mars orbiter and lander in 1999 and 2000.
This "Beagle" has one arm, a paw and 12 ovens.
The scientists behind Mars Express say they've learned from NASA's past mistakes and have relied on old models and kept new designs simple to avoid trouble.
"My philosophy is if you don't have any money, you have to think harder," said Colin Pillinger, lead scientist of the mission, making a point that he has repeated to media outlets around the world.
Something Borrowed, Something New
Pillinger, who is based at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, explains the mostly university-based team of scientists behind Mars Express has toiled with "absolute focus" for the past five years to ensure their spaceship and lander won't fail.
Many of the tools on board the Mars Express spacecraft, from stereo cameras to an infrared camera to ground-penetrating radar, were borrowed from a previous mission, Russia's Mars 96 (a failed mission that was actually delayed until 1998).
And, unlike NASA's landers, which are due to arrive at the Red Planet just days after the European mission, the Beagle 2 won't be able to roam around Mars' surface.
Once bouncing to the ground by parachute and air bags, the round Beagle 2 will open up like a daisy, exposing solar panel arrays to keep it powered. There, somewhere within Isidis Planitia, a large flat region that overlies the boundary between Mars' ancient highlands and northern plains, it will stay.
To explore, the Beagle 2 will rely on a robotic arm to position instruments to scope out its landing site and collect soil and rock samples from the ground for analysis.
But even the array of instruments at the arm's end had to be kept to a minimum.
"We took a ruthless view when it came to the composition of the scientific payload," said Alan Wells, director of the space research center at the University of Leicester in England, which is in charge of the Beagle 2. "There were a lot of instruments we would have liked to have had in the payload, but we realized we had a limit."
Dig and Sniff
The Beagle tools that made the cut include stereo cameras, which will scan the landing site for good areas to probe. The arm's corer/grinder will then dig into the surface and collect soil and rocks, which it will deposit into Beagle's middle. Here, a mini gas-analysis laboratory will heat the samples and sniff whatever gases are released.
The point is to test the samples for the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 13, since on Earth a higher level of carbon 12 is a fairly sure signal of life.
Another tool, known as the mole, will crawl for up to five feet along Mars' surface, while tethered to the main craft. When directed, it can inch into crevices and retrieve bits of soil and rock for testing inside the Beagle.
Meanwhile, gas spectrometers at the tip of the arm will bombard the nearby surface with gamma rays and read the rays that bounce back to determine the mineral content of the surface rocks and soil. A powerful microscope, also at the arm's end, will zero in on the dusty surface, seeking for signs of microbial life.
"Everybody's looking for that Holy Grail — the definitive evidence of past or even present life forms," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs.
Red Planet Race?
Researchers point out there are plenty of ways the Mars Express mission could fail.
"Landing on Mars is hard," said Logsdon. "Landing on Mars and getting useful data back is even harder. To do that on a limited budget is harder yet."
One close call was fortunately caught in testing. The parachute designed for the Beagle 2 didn't slow the craft enough and the lander's air bags didn't provide adequate cushioning to prevent what would have been a fateful crash landing.
Now the chute and bags have been revamped to help ensure a soft touchdown in late December 2003.
"We'll give them the kudos only after they pull it off," said Logsdon.
NASA's two landers, which will launch later this month, are due to touch down slightly later in early January 2004. The trio of missions on the planet all at the same time is sure to generate comparisons between the programs of the established, bureaucratic NASA and the up-and-coming European Space Agency.
But people from both agencies claim they're not competing.
NASA spokesman George Diller denied the two agencies are in a "race." He said having the European mission happening at the same time "is a very complementary" to what the NASA rovers will be doing.
And Pillinger claims he has no interest in showing up NASA's Mars programs.
"I don't feel any competition with anybody," he said. "We're doing the best experiments we can think of and whatever we find we'll share with everybody. The only commodity that increases as you share it is knowledge."