I attended an AIAA talk given by the guy who did the CFD on Beagle-2's aeroshell. I was underwhelmed to say the least. Beagle-2's designers reused the aeroshell geometry for the Huygen probe which is a Titan lander (mainly nitrogen atmosphere) for Mars entry (mainly carbon dioxide atmosphere). Their aerodynamic data base was mainly for air (mostly nitrogen). The ratio of specific heats, drag coefficient, etc. are significantly different between a nitrogen atmosphere and Mars. Beagle-2 is not going to use decelerator rockets like Mars Pathfinder and MER. It's going all the way down on parachutes alone and let its airbags take the full final shock of impact. I did some back of the envelope calculations concerning the surface impact speed of Beagle-2 and concluded that it's going to whack in fast (no margin for error allowed for the Martian atmospheric density being too thin or the parachute drag coefficient being too low).

Beagle-2 has errors in its basic design and no safety factor. The Demons of Chaos do not normally allow a spacecraft to survive landing when this sort of situation exists (particularly on Mars).

Gary