The Beagle Report Has Landed

An official investigation into Europe’s failed Mars mission delivered veiled criticisms of the ambitious project on Monday, recommending better management and funding of any future ventures to the Red Planet.

British Science Minister Lord Sainsbury said that no single technical failure or shortcoming was to blame for the failure of Europe’s first attempt to land a probe on Mars, but he suggested that scientists had overestimated the mission’s chances for success.

“It’s now clear that the very high potential scientific benefits of the project may have contributed to a collective institutional underestimate of ways to identify and mitigate the risks ... and they proved difficult to resolve due to tight financial and schedule constraints,” Sainsbury said.

As the project failed, two U.S. spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars and sent back numerous pictures of the planet.

The British government and the European Space Agency refused to release the full report they commissioned into the loss of the Beagle 2 Mars lander, issuing only a list of recommendations generated from the inquiry.

The government plowed more than $40 million into the British-built Mars lander, which was due to touch down on Mars on Christmas Day but has not been heard from. Private companies donated at least another $40 million.

David Southwood, director of space science at ESA, said that scientists had learned several lessons from the failure of Beagle 2 and that Europe would continue with its space exploration.

“We were working in a system which wasn’t right, where the organizational structures weren’t right and people didn’t have the right level of empowerment, authority or resource,” he said.

“Exploring the solar system is too important to just leave to the Americans, and we Europeans have our role to play out there.”