Mars Exploration News  
No Place To Hide From The Beagle

The Beagle 2 lander, to be carried on ESA's Mars Express, is equipped with a suite of instruments designed to look for evidence of life on Mars.

Paris (ESA) Sep 10, 2002
Of all missions sent to Mars only one, the Viking 26 years ago, has dared to search for life. Its only conclusive result was that finding proof of extraterrestrial life proved to be much harder than expected. Second attempts never followed.

Until now. ESA's Mars Express, the next mission to the Red Planet and the first European one, has an ambitious goal. To be launched in 2003, Mars Express will be the first spacecraft after Viking to search for direct and indirect evidence for past or present life on Mars.

This time, scientists are equipped with more knowledge and insight in how to detect Martian life. The chances of success look very good.

The expectations regarding life on Mars have changed substantially since the Viking missions. Today's scientists are considering several alternatives:

  • Martian life exists, but the lifeforms are so small you can barely see them and they probably live underground;
  • Martian life is not only small but also dead and extinct by now, so the search is for fossils and not for living organisms; and
  • there is no life on Mars now and there never has been.

    Each of the two Viking landers, launched in 1976, carried three biological experiments. All of them searched for microbes or microorganisms, or their 'signature', in soil samples. All three experiments, based on different concepts, quickly produced positive results. The thrill died down as scientists soon realised that a non-biological process could easily explain most of the results. Surprisingly, the non-biological process that had tricked scientists had not been anticipated by anyone prior to the launch.

    ESA's Mars Express will arrive at Mars in December 2003 and will follow a strategy quite different from that of the Viking.

    It consists of an orbiter plus a lander, called Beagle 2, "as an homage to the ship on which Charles Darwin found the inspiration to write his theory of evolution," says Agustin Chicarro, ESA Project Scientist for Mars Express, also pointing out that "indeed this mission could be as revolutionary as Darwin's ideas because it is the first one after the Viking to search for life."

    A key difference between Mars Express and the Vikings is that now scientists are aware that they should also look for past, fossilised life. A few biological experiments are not enough.

    Mars Express's scientists will combine many different types of test findings, for example, to help discard contradictory results.

    Some of the evidence will be indirect, mostly focused on the search for water. The Mars Express orbiter will have seven instruments on-board, apart from the lander Beagle 2. One of these instruments will image the entire planet in full color, in 3D, at a resolution of about 10 metres. Another will map the mineral composition of the surface with great accuracy.

    "These data will be key to determine how much water there was in the past, and from that you can estimate how much water there is left," says Chicarro.

    A third instrument on-board the Mars Express orbiter will search for water below the surface, to measure the thickness of the layer of ice or permafrost, that is, a thick subsurface layer of soil that has a temperature below 0 C all year round.

    Other studies will determine the amount of water in the atmosphere and the water cycle: how the water is deposited in the poles and how it evaporates depending on the seasons.

    The search for direct evidence of past or present biological activity will be the task of the lander, Beagle 2. Once deployed, in an area that was probably flooded in the past, Beagle 2 will unfold its robotic arm where most of the instruments are located.

    Beagle 2 carries several instruments, among them a gas analysis package that will determine whether carbonate minerals on Mars, if they exist, have been involved in biological processes. If there are certain gases on Mars, such as methane, that scientists believe can only be produced by organisms living either on the surface or below it, Beagle's 'nose' will detect them.

    The feeble Martian atmosphere cannot prevent ultraviolet radiation from the Sun killing potential life. For this reason, it is important to get samples from places below the surface, under large boulders, and within the interiors of rocks. Beagle 2 will collect samples with a mole able to crawl short distances across the surface, about 1 centimetre every six seconds, and to dig down to 1.5 metres deep.

    If the digging proves to be hard, a grinder will help access the rocks' protected interior. With all these available tools, Mars Express will be the best mission ever to discover life on Mars. There can be no place for life to hide from it.

    Community
    Email This Article
    Comment On This Article

    Related Links
    Mars Express
    Life and Mars at ESA Science
    SpaceDaily
    Search SpaceDaily
    Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
    Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
    Lunar Dreams and more



    Memory Foam Mattress Review
    Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
    XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


    Spirit Heading To 'Home Plate'
    Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 09, 2006
    Last week Spirit completed robotic-arm work on "El Dorado." The rover used all three of its spectrometers plus the microscopic imager for readings over the New Year's weekend.











  • Moon and Earth Formed out of Identical Material
  • Lunar Soil Yields Evidence About Sun's Dynamic Workings
  • Unique tasks for SMART-1 in exploring the Moon
  • NASA Seeks Berth On India's Moon Mission

  • Aeroflex Offeres 16Bit Radhard Microcontroller
  • Sick Or Sleepy -- No Option In Outer Space
  • BAE Systems Receives Satellite Components Contract From TRW
  • DLR Boosts Rad Protection For BIRD Sats With Actel bb

  • Senate Looks To The Future As Pluto Probe Wins Key Funding Support
  • Final Pluto Showdown Looming
  • Scientists Back Kuiper Belt Mission To Pluto
  • Pluto Probe Design Checks Out As Ready To Build

  • Galileo Team Continue To Prepare For Final Jupiter Flyby
  • The Next Four Weeks on Galileo
  • NASA Funding On The Blink During Amalthea Flyby
  • Io's Volcanic Surface Captured in Full Motion



  • Hydrocarbons Blow Strong Across Titan
  • No Rest On The Way To The Most Mysterious Of Saturn's Moons
  • Cassini Nearly Out Of Rehab
  • Cassini Two Years Out From Saturn Orbital Insertion

  • Australia To Help Ease Deep Space Traffic Jam
  • Near-Frictionless Carbon Coating Nears Commercial Applications
  • New Way To Make Dense Complex-Shaped Ceramics At Lower Cost
  • Amazing Magnetic Fluids

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement