The UK’s Beagle 2 lander, which has been missing for 11 years, was just found on the surface of Mars and is now officially safe from the clutches of any alien invaders and their cheap voodoo.
The Beagle 2 was supposed to land on the Red Planet back in 2003, but contact was lost on December 26 of that year, and no one knew what happened to it until now. As it turns out, the mission wasn’t actually a failure, either; the images of Beagle 2 captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.
Sadly, professor Colin Pillinger, the man behind the Beagle 2 mission, passed away last year, although news that the landing had been a relative success despite no one knowing about it may have just made him angrier that there was never a followup mission. According to Phys.org, he told the Bristol Post in 2012, “If we’d turned around immediately and said we’ll give it another shot, we could have men on their way to Mars by now.”
But other members of the Beagle 2 team, like manager Mark Sims of Leicester University, are happy to finally have the mystery solved. He said at a press conference, “Every Christmas Day since 2003, I have wondered what happened to it and had nearly given up hope of ever knowing.”
It’s OK, everyone. The Beagle has landed.
(via Phys.org)
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
