The Beagle has
Landed
The Beagle 2
lander carrying an onboard mass
spectrometer will ride to Mars as part of
the European Mars Express mission in 2003.
The British-led Beagle 2 project is the
probe for the Mars Express Spacecraft due
to be launched in June 2003 from Baikonur
Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in the former USSR.
The lander's name is taken from HMS Beagle
used by Charles Darwin to undertake
discoveries in natural history which led
to the writing of "On the Origin of
Species".
The probe consists of the Entry, Descent
and Landing System (EDLS) and the lander
itself. The aim of the mission is to study
the geology of the planet for evidence
relating to past life on Mars. To achieve
this, the Beagle 2 lander has a robotic
arm for manipulating scientific
instruments and the mole for collecting
samples. With a landed mass of less than
30kg, Beagle 2 represents the most
ambitious science payload to systems mass
ratio ever attempted.
The clam-shaped lander (below) is composed
of a toughened outer shell on an aluminium
honeycomb core. Within the inner shell a
mass spectrometer; three cameras, seven
environmental sensors, five solar panels,
a robotic arm, telecommunications and
electronics systems are housed. The two
halves of the lander, lid and base are
joined by a spring-loaded hinge which,
irrespective of the orientation which
Beagle 2 finds itself on Mars, will open
the clam in its correct position.
In a return to the first mass spectrometer
developed in Britian, the design for
Beagle 2's mass spectrometer is a minature
90 degree sector instrument having a
magnet of less than 1 kg made from a rare
earth metal alloy and an ion pump using
the same material. It will embody the
principle of the dual inlet whereby light
element samples and standards are
sequentially compared for high precision
isotopic measurements and operate in
static vacuum mode for greatest
sensitivity.
Professor Colin
Pillinger, who leads the Planetary and
Space Sciences Research Institute at the
Open University, and his group have
developed the mass spectrometer and the
environmental sensors. The money to build
the lander comes from the Wellcome Trust,
the medical research charity which has
funded a large portion of the Human Genome
Project. Building the instrument could
lead to extremely useful medical
spin-offs.
"The whole point is how the instrument
could be developed further," says
Professor Colin Pillinger. "It will be
small, robust, light and automated. It
could be sterilised and we may in the end
be able to build something that could turn
into a personal mass spectrometer".
Britain has a long tradition in building
mass spectrometers stretching back to
Nobel Laureate Francis
W. Aston
in 1919.
More information can be found at the
project's web site: www.beagle2.com