The final resting place 鈥� and ultimate fate 鈥� of Europe鈥檚 Beagle 2 Mars lander will have to remain a mystery for now: High-resolution images show no trace of it where it was thought to lie.
The HiRISE camera onboard NASA鈥檚 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 鈥� the best camera ever sent beyond Earth orbit 鈥� has previously spotted a number of other landers on the planet鈥檚 surface, including the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity and possibly Sojourner.
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But new images have failed to turn up the European Space Agency鈥檚 Beagle 2 lander, which was released towards the planet in December 2003 and never heard from again.
In December 2005, the Beagle 2 team announced finding what they thought were the lander鈥檚 remains in a 19-metre-wide crater. That suggested the lander had hit the sloped side of the crater wall and been fatally injured, since it was designed to land on a flat, horizontal surface (see Wreckage of Beagle 2 found on Mars).
But their evidence came from NASA鈥檚 now-lost Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (see image below right). The newer HiRISE has a resolution between two and five times better than MGS and can image objects just under 30 centimetres across.
It finds no signs of Beagle 2 in the crater, named H20. 鈥淥f course this is disappointing,鈥� says Colin Pillinger, lead scientist of the Beagle 2 mission at The Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. 鈥淲e had hoped that the HiRISE camera would clarify the oddities we had seen in the crater, but this is not the case.鈥�
Discovering the landing site and condition of Beagle 2 would provide clues about what might have caused the mission to fail. 鈥淚 remain optimistic that future images may yet show us where Beagle 2 finally came to rest,鈥� says Pillinger.
