Drunkard's Walk Forums

Eleven years ago on Christmas the British Mars lander Beagle II disappeared after detaching from its "mother ship" to enter Mars' atmosphere.  This prompted a lot of comment, speculation and humor -- does anyone else remember "All these worlds are yours except for Mars -- attempt no landings there"?
Anyway, the Beagle's fate has been a mystery for more than a decade.  But it's a mystery no longer -- a NASA orbiter has spotted it on Mars' surface.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/16/world/mar ... index.html]More info here.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Yeah, that was distressing; it got all the way to Mars, landed safely and then didn't unfold. Or, at least, didn't completely unfold.
My first impulse was, "They ought to send another mission to unfold the damn thing!" While not realistic, it'd be cool if a future human-crewed mission did get it working.

Pfffft. They'll just do what they've been doing. They'll send a probe to fix it.

Though it'd be kinda cool if it was a rover intended to go around fixing other rovers and landers.