Beagle 2 and Super Resolution

Tuesday, 26 April, 2016

The Beagle 2 was perhaps the most infamous of British attempts in space. The sheer audacity of a tiny mission, built on a shoestring to achieve a dramatic landing on Mars… that failed! it was subsequently found “intact” on the Martian surface using MRO data which is (at best) 30cm resolution (in a low orbit). This has now been reprocessed using multiple images and the so called Super-Resolution Restoration technique to produced imagery with an effective 5cm per pixel resolution to show the Beagle in even greater detail.

And, as suspected, rather than suffering the ignominious fate of impacting into the surface at very high speed, smashing in to a crumpled mess, it landed pretty much bang in the middle of its intended location, descending to the surface for a gentle touchdown. It looks like the “petals” with solar panels didn’t fully deploy which would have stopped the comms kicking in. One day we might know for sure…

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