Artist's impression of Beagle 2 leaving Mars Express

Mars Express completed its nominal mission lifetime after being in orbit around the Red Planet for one Martian year, 687 Earth days, and is still operating today.

Beagle 2 with shield in action

Beagle 2 entry, descent and landing

Beagle 2 was planned to descend to the surface, entering the atmosphere at more than 20 000 kilometres per hour. A heat-resistant shield would have protected it as friction with the upper atmosphere slowed it down.

When its speed had fallen to about 1600 kilometres per hour, a parachute would have deployed to slow it further. Finally, large gas-filled bags inflate to protect it as it bounced to a halt on the chosen landing site.

As soon as the lander came to a halt, the gas bags would have been jettisoned, its clam-like outer casing sprung open, its solar panels unfurled, the robotic arm deployed and its cameras started to take in the view.

Unfortunately, the Beagle 2 lander was declared lost after it failed to make contact with orbiting spacecraft and Earth-based radio telescopes.

The landing site

Beagle 2 was planned to land on Isidis Planitia, a large, flat sedimentary basin straddling the relatively young northern plains and ancient southern highlands, where traces of life could have been preserved.

The intended landing site (10.6°N, 270°W) was at low latitude to minimise the amount of insulation (and hence mass) needed to protect the lander from the cold Martian night.

The site was not too rocky to have threatened a safe landing (but rocky enough to be interesting for the experiments), had few steep slopes down which the probe may have bounced as it landed, and was not too dusty.

Isidis Planitia is at a low enough elevation to have provided sufficient depth of atmosphere to allow the parachutes to have braked the lander's descent.

Communications and spacecraft operations

During each orbit, Mars Express spends some time turned towards the planet for instrument observations and some time turned towards Earth for communications with ground stations.

Data collected by the orbiter instruments is transmitted to an ESA ground station at New Norcia near Perth, Australia, at a rate of up to 230 kbps. Between 0.5 and 5 Gbits of scientific data is downlinked from the spacecraft to Earth every day.

From Perth they are sent on to the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, which adds spacecraft attitude and orbital data, and then retransmits the data to the instrument Principal Investigators (PI) for further processing and analysis.

After about six months, the processed data will be sent to the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands for placing in a publicly available Mars Express science data archive.

Information on the health and position of the spacecraft is included in a separate data stream. The Mars Express operations team at ESOC use this information, together with the forthcoming operational needs of the instruments, to work out new commands to instruct the spacecraft how to behave over the coming months. The new commands are sent to the spacecraft via the Perth ground station.