Professor Colin Pillinger, RIP

TÃ½r · Post by **TÃ½r** » Thu May 08, 2014 1:27 am

I'm saddened to note the passing of the latest in a line of British scientists who have, over the years, enthused and thereby educated the nation. Professor Colin Pillinger was the driving force behind the Martian Beagle soft-lander which didn't, and the news coverage of him witnessing the slow disintegration of years of teamwork was harrowing.

Behind him stretch out a line of mass-media public educators from a scientific background such as Eric Laithwaite the Maglev engineer at Imperial College, Fred Hoyle the Cambridge cosmologist, Carl Sagan at Cornell and Richard Feynman at Caltech. They all brightened the world. Now we have that cheery chap whose name escapes me. I'm glad they all made the effort.

FG-administator · Post by **FG-administator** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:59 pm

TÃ½r;1453508 wrote: Professor Colin Pillinger was the driving force behind the Martian Beagle soft-lander which didn't

I beg leave to apologize to the Beagle team. Beagle has been found, soft-landed and part-deployed, so much closer to total success than anyone at the time assumed. It needed to fully unfold to be able to communicate, and the photos show the unfurling process didn't reach completion. The parachute appears to have worked, the airbag appears to have worked, Beagle itself isn't spread over miles of terrain, it's sat where it was aimed and it's intact. What a heartening conclusion.

BBC News - Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars

Post by **LarsMac** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:57 pm

FG;1471652 wrote: I beg leave to apologize to the Beagle team. Beagle has been found, soft-landed and part-deployed, so much closer to total success than anyone at the time assumed. It needed to fully unfold to be able to communicate, and the photos show the unfurling process didn't reach completion. The parachute appears to have worked, the airbag appears to have worked, Beagle itself isn't spread over miles of terrain, it's sat where it was aimed and it's intact. What a heartening conclusion.

BBC News - Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars

Well, it was great to find the Beagle and know that it almost completed its mission.

But then, I guess it doesn't really count as a success until you can make it back home.

Kind of like Mallory and Irvine. It is now believed that they reached the summit in '24, but unlike Hillary and Tenzig, They did not make it back to brag about it.

"that Cheery Chap" ? Are you referring to your Dr Dawkins?

I know the world could use more guys like Feynman, and Sagan.

Our Dr Tyson is fun, but he tends to take himself a bit too seriously, now and again.

FG-administator · Post by **FG-administator** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 4:08 pm

LarsMac;1471656 wrote: "that Cheery Chap" ? Are you referring to your Dr Dawkins?We have an authentic scientist whose brief is to raise the profile of the sciences in the public mind. He started life as a physicist, he's Brian Cox and he's not the same Brian Cox who was in Deadwood playing the Irish Actor-Manager. Both Coxes are essential elements of British Culture.

Post by **spot** » Sun Oct 16, 2016 12:51 pm

The European successor to Beagle, Schiaparelli, has detached for landing on Wednesday in preparation for the ExoMars Rover four years from now.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... wards-mars

Post by **spot** » Thu Oct 20, 2016 6:14 am

It looks awfully like they lost it, too. It will need a photo to be sure, but the lander only has at most a week's power before it goes cold.

At least Beagle came down in one piece. Schiaparelli seems to have landed rather less gracefully.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/21 ... f-descent/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... a-confirms

"We are not in a position yet to determine the dynamic conditions in which the lander touched the ground" - great euphemism, I hope I never have occasion to use it.

Post by **spot** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 9:04 am

The autopsy on Schiaparelli has found that the lander thought it had landed, released the parachute and blipped its engine before powering off at an altitude of two miles.

One bit of the control program thought a register's range was always positive and another bit of the control program thought the register's range could be negative as well as positive, and when the actual content went high during a turbulent patch the "landed" condition was wrongly set.

That's even more classic an error than part-loading a metric table with imperial values. Both are lethal to Mars landers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/24 ... stigation/

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 9:32 am

spot;1503125 wrote: The autopsy on Schiaparelli has found that the lander thought it had landed, released the parachute and blipped its engine before powering off at an altitude of two miles.

One bit of the control program thought a register's range was always positive and another bit of the control program thought the register's range could be negative as well as positive, and when the actual content went high during a turbulent patch the "landed" condition was wrongly set.

That's even more classic an error than part-loading a metric table with imperial values. Both are lethal to Mars landers.

'Data saturation' helped to crash the Schiaparelli Mars probe â€¢ The Register

Well I suppose that's what testing is for but it's a shame that the simulators didn't find it first.

Post by **spot** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 2:09 pm

The comparison with Douglas Adams' whale is exact.