IT IS not hard to understand why the team that put together Europe鈥檚 ill-fated Mars lander, Beagle 2, wants another shot at the Red Planet. The science that was to be done by the lander is still compelling, and the potential prize 鈥� the discovery of life beyond Earth 鈥� could scarcely be any bigger.
The team may have failed this time, but the experience gained lays the foundations for future missions. The internal investigation into the loss of the lander, published this week, is an important step towards making them a success. It examines in painstaking detail more than 150 scenarios that might have caused the lander to fail, ranging from damage from solar flares to airbag failure (see 鈥淔ate of Beagle will remain a mystery鈥�). It then goes on to list more than 300 lessons that the Beagle 2 team learned from the project.
The report is intended as a handbook of the pitfalls that spacecraft designers should avoid in future Mars missions. Its lessons are already being implemented by team members who have moved on to other projects such as the European Space Agency鈥檚 ExoMars, its next attempt to land on the planet, due for launch in 2009. The openness of Mark Sims, the Beagle 2 mission manager who edited the report, in making this information freely available to competitors as well as colleagues can only be admired.
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In any other circumstances, such a comprehensive report would draw a firm line under the failure. But for Beagle 2, controversy is likely to drag on, thanks to the way ESA and the UK government have behaved. They provided the lion鈥檚 share of the mission鈥檚 funding and earlier this year commissioned their own investigation to look not only at technical reasons for the mission鈥檚 demise but also at management failures. They refused to publish this report, citing vague confidentiality and legal reasons.
The Beagle 2 team鈥檚 ability to write its report without falling foul of such issues gives the lie to this position. It seems more likely that the secrecy was intended to save the ESA and UK government from embarrassment. It is a cover-up that should not be allowed to stand.
In October, the UK鈥檚 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee will publish its own investigation into the loss of the 拢45 million lander. That may go some way to filling in the gaps in this tale. But it cannot lay the ghost of Beagle 2 completely. Until the ESA/UK government report is published, it will remain a stain on the original project and haunt future European missions to Mars like a restless soul.