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Planetary News: Mars (2004)Beagle 2: Commission of Inquiry Board Cites Poor Management for Loss; ESA will Implement Recommendations, and Continue Quest to Mars to Find Life on MarsBy A.J.S. Rayl24 May 2004 Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the British government released the recommendations and the implementation plan of action that have emerged from the Commission of Inquiry into the loss of Beagle 2, at a press conference in London today. Both Lord Sainsbury, the U.K. Science Minister, and David Southwood, ESA Science Director, noted that the report's findings revealed that "no single failure" was to blame, but that the project had been poorly managed. "The inquiry does not put blame on any one . . . but does define areas where we need to learn," said Lord Sainsbury. Both ESA and the British government, he added, had agreed to the recommendations, and have formulated a plan to implement all of them "in future missions so that we can benefit from them when we return as we will, to Mars." Despite the loss of Beagle 2, Southwood also confirmed for the media personnel who had gathered in London and via teleconference from around the world that Europe would continue her quest to Mars, saying that ESA "would move forward in the next few months pretty rapidly." At the same time, Colin Pillinger, the 'father' of the Beagle 2, pleaded for Britain to establish a space agency specifically dedicated to managing Britain's involvement in space exploration. The press conference -- which was held jointly by ESA and British National Space Center (BNSC), the two agencies that commissioned the inquiry -- was called, ostensibly, to unveil the inquiry's recommendations without divulging its findings. Although both Lord Sainsbury and David Southwood said they have learned from the failure of Beagle 2, exactly what they learned is being kept under wraps. Unlike similar reports from inquiries into NASA failures and losses, the Inquiry Commission's report will not be made public, something that is being viewed controversially. The British government and ESA will keep the contents of the report confidential, because they promised confidentiality at the outset to ensure no one was afraid to come forward with evidence, and to protect "sensitive agreements" with commercial interests, Southwood said. Apparently, there are presently only four copies of the report and Pillinger said even he had not yet seen it. Anybody involved and with a need to know will receive "a confidential debriefing," Southwood said. "We will tell anybody what's in the analysis in the report . . . but we will keep the contents confidential because it could affect other people." The Beagle 2 -- which was named after the ship on which Charles Darwin sailed to the Galapagos, a trip that led to his formulation of his theory of evolution -- hitched a flight to the Red Planet aboard ESA's Mars Express, which launched in June 2003 and is currently in orbit around the Red Planet. The 'puppy,' as Pillinger had come to affectionately call the little lander was due to touch down on Mars on Christmas Day, much like the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity did -- in a bouncing ball of airbags. Then, it was to have opened up and begun looking for signs of life, past or present. But the lander lost contact with Earth once it separated from its mothership December 19 and despite repeated efforts to establish contact, the puppy remained silent. The objective of the inquiry was not to point fingers or to look for someone who is culpable, said Southwood. "No single event led to failure and no single individual made a bad decision," he said. Having said that, however, Southwood did assume "collective" culpability. "The bottom line is that no single event led failure or has been identified as leading to failure . . . however the failure was institutional," he elaborated. "We were working in a system which wasn't right. The organizational structures weren't in place . . . and that I think means for me - that I am culpable -- only collectively -- and I think that applies to everyone involved." "Europe will return to Mars," Southwood reiterated. "Beagle 2 was a wonderful thing. It captured the public's imagination," he said. "It is most important to recognize that of the countries that have gotten to Mars successfully, they first failed. We've learned from our failures. Mars is so important Europe should be going there." Next time, Southwood added, the agency and project managers will approach such missions differently in that they will handle the complexity in the appropriate way, work to higher standards for levels of success, and will apply same rigors to building landers same as we do spacecraft. The Commission has proposed a set of 19 Recommendations that can be grouped in three parts:
During the Inquiry board's investigation, many individual decisions were analyzed, however, the institutional lessons learned emanated from the fact that the Beagle was viewed and treated as an instrument and not as an integral part of the mission, which at the time was standard practice. The lander was built by an outside team of scientists from universities, rather than treated as an integral part of the space agency's Mars Express mission. Pillinger and the Beagle 2 Team had come to the same conclusion, which Pillinger noted during his Dialogue with The Planetary Society a few weeks ago. In its recommendations made public Monday, the inquiry report stated "any future complex instrument or lander must be built under the same management process as the mission spacecraft." Southwood also suggested that the 'faster, better' cheaper' "mantra" of NASA played a role. "There was enormous pressure on everybody in Europe to show they could also do things cheaper." But the American failures of the Mars Polar Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander in 1999 would "radically" change the NASA thinking. "If you go back and read reports of the recommendations you will see echoes [of them in the Beagle 2 inquiry report recommendations] today." When those analyses of the NASA failures came out, Southwood noted, Mars Express and Beagle 2 were already in production and so they were unable to really benefit from the American findings. Nevertheless, one lesson learned, he said was -- "If you want faster, better, cheaper, you've got to be smarter." "Maybe I should have not taken Beagle," Southwood mused later. "But that would have to be a different person than me. It was an incredible goal and we got incredibly close . . . everybody involved knows that and feels and sad. If we had never done it we would not have learned all that we have learned," said Southwood. One of the key findings of the Inquiry Commission's report is that decisions need to be made early on in projects to give them the best chance of success, another lesson Pillinger talked about in his Dialogue. "If you don't make the decision early you have no way to retire the risks," he reiterated at this press conference. Because Beagle 2 was a late add-on to the Mars Express launch, there was always a risk that the deadlines were too tight, Southwood said. "What I saw when I saw the Beagle team working very clever people working in very constrained circumstances," he said. "We gave Beagle the very best shot we could within the constraints," said Pillinger today. And the constraints -- both with regard to time and money were considerable. The fact that the Beagle 2 Team's had "to chase funding" certainly did not help, said Southwood. "But I don't think that, overall, Beagle had too little money; it just didn't have it at the right time." Although Pillinger has never revealed the actual cost of his Beagle, estimates put the figure between £40 and £50 million [British pounds] or $71.5 million to $90 million U.S. A second British Mars lander would be likely to cost £100 million, double the cost of Beagle 2, Pillinger said today. As has been reported at this website and numerous others, Pillinger tried doggedly to get sponsorship for Beagle 2 from all kinds of outside entities and organizations. The approach, however, didn't really work, and the terms under which such sponsorships are generally made could be in conflict with the ultimate objective, said Southwood. "I don't see how to take on high-risk programs with the prospect of commercial sponsorship," Southwood said. "One of the risks you have with commercial sponsorship is [that] you would have to be success oriented. There is a tendency to overestimate the success or under-report the difficulties and that is not [the way to go]. Colin, I think, is correct in saying that open systems work best, [but] if you're looking around for money, trying to find a sponsor, you have a certain risk in being totally open. And going to Mars is particularly, statistically "just very, very hard." Southwood suggested the question of financing is a challenge for the public to take up. "The reason they should take it up is because every ordinary person understands why the questions we're asking are important -- they reflect on all of us," he said. "I don't feel terribly ashamed in saying that this should be publicly funded." The irony in the Beagle's case, Pillinger pointed out, is that the team was upfront, and boldly honest about the risks when they discussed the possibilities with commercial interests. "We didn't get sponsorship, probably because we were too honest with the risks. In fact we told them this was like Formula One -- a crash and burn sport, and they considered it to be too much of a crash and burn sport to give us money . . . and we did this at a time when the advertising market was at rock bottom." Since Beagle 2 had no telemetry system on board, there was no data or communication of any sort with the lander once it left Mars Express, as there had been on the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and, without any hard evidence or data from the spacecraft to analyze, nobody can say for certain right now what happened to the British lander. The panel at the press conference did openly consider many of the possibilities - everything from the atmosphere causing Beagle to miss its special trajectory and burn up, to the failure of the parachute or the airbags, the design and placement of the parachute and back cover of the landing shell, to poor timing, or even wind interference. Pillinger said he thought Beagle 2 probably crashed, because the Martian atmosphere was thinner than models had predicted, something that MER's Spirit also encountered. The atmosphere may have been thinner because of massive dust storms that appeared to have heated the Martian atmosphere. If that were the case, Beagle 2's parachutes and the airbags that were supposed to cushion its fall would have been deployed too late or not at all. "We probably won't ever know for sure what went wrong," Southwood concluded. "Colin and Beagle team will wonder forever . . . maybe we'll get image some day." The Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) onboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has been imaging all of the landing sites on mars, those of Spirit and Opportunity, as well as the intended ellipse in which Beagle was to land at Isidis Planitia. So there is a possibility Beagle 2 could show up on image from the MOC in the not too distant future. Pillinger and MOC's principal investigator, Mike Malin, are continuing the search. "And maybe one day Europeans marching over Martian surface will find Beagle," Southwood continued. "We can't rule that out. But now it's time to turn to the future," he said echoing the sentiments of the others on the dais. "If we are to go back to Mars, we need to walk before we run" and "develop the capabilities for building landers." Beagle 2 did succeed in accomplishing one important objective, Pillinger reminded -- "to inspire Britain's youth" to take an interest in science and engineering. "We're going to be benefit the prosperity from that inspiration," he contended. But now, "the time has come everybody to move on," he said as he called on the government to set up a UK space agency so that failures like Beagle 2 can be avoided. "Please mister can you give us a space agency . . . we like to see Britain being in space business, we want a space agency, we want to be supported and we want to be first to go to Mars and find life there." The implementation plan by which ESA will go about meeting the recommendations of the Inquiry were presented as follows:
"This isn't the end of the story - mirabilia is going to continue," Southwood said. "We are living in great times in European space. Mars Express arrived in Mars orbit and SMART 1 is on its way to the Moon, Double Star 1 was launched with China, and Rosetta was launched to a comet. . . next month Cassini-Huygens -- a joint project involving America and Europe -- arrives at Saturn - carrying a European lander with major technology on board to land on Titan early next year . . . and next year Venus Express. We need to keep exploring," he pointed out. "We'll move forward in the next few months pretty rapidly and we'll be looking for how to recover the science [of looking for life on Mars] we still feel has not been done," Southwood continued. "How we do the recovery is another matter, but astrobiology came up trumps for a lander once before and you can take it that we happen to regard it still as a major priority, but I'm not going to guarantee how we precisely do it." Southwood would not say whether Pillinger would be the man behind the next Martian lander mission, or anything about exactly how and when it might happen. "I'm making no commitments to Colin, but obviously he won a competition last time and he's still competitive," Southwood offered. Pillinger called for decisions to be made early, saying that it is "imperative that the decision to return to Mars be taken quickly," so that the project can be planned properly, and the engineers have time to do proper testing. "We need to make a decision relatively rapidly and we're pushing ahead as fast as we can in the agency to make sure that we can meet the challenge," Southwood acknowledged. However, next time I want to see more time margins and more resort margins (sic) available to anyone building anything. "We had a failure with Beagle 2, but we mustn't let that stop us," Southwood said in conclusion. "Exploring the solar system is too important to just leave to the Americans." |
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