LONDON — It turns out the Beagle has landed after all — but it never called home.
The gone-but-not-forgotten spacecraft Beagle-2 went AWOL on Christmas Day 2003, when it was supposed to land on Mars and transmit data to Earth.
Instead, the British-built craft went dark. After several months, it was declared lost — presumed to have been destroyed during its approach or while trying to land on the red planet.
On Friday, more than 11 years later, European Space Agency officials reported that the Beagle-2 had been found — thanks to detective work based on photos taken by the high-resolution camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The photos show the craft landed safely on Mars and partially deployed — but was unable to fully deploy and communicate.
Still, it was a vindication of sorts for space scientists who had wondered for more than a decade about the fate of their project, which was designed to search for signs of life on Mars.
Rudolf Schmidt, ESA’s Mars Express project manager at the time, called the finding “excellent news.” He said not knowing what happened to Beagle-2 had “remained a nagging worry.”
Soon after Beagle-2’s disappearance, NASA landed Spirit and Opportunity. Both sent back troves of images and discoveries, providing the sort of information astronomers had been seeking when the first Mars probes began.
