Nowhere did I write the word permanently in my post above. The first time I heard that it can't transmit is in the Press Release below, but in a talk, at the University of Washington, Jack Farmer mentioned it as well. This maybe something they can fix or it is transmitting, only so weakly as to be undetected.

I note you didn't reply to the probes thing...find out they cost about as much as Beagle II? Isn't Beagle planned to soft land on Mars...is Huygens planned to soft land on TItan?

BTW, Many of the people involved in designing and building Beagle II are members of the Mars Society. I cheer them on, but see the budget they had to work with and wonder how close to failure the mission is... --CV

...

From: Ron Baalke (baalke@zagami.jpl.nasa.gov)
Subject: NOZOMI Succeeds in Earth Swingby
Newsgroups: sci.astro, alt.sci.planetary, alt.astronomy
Date: 2003-04-02 15:56:46 PST

http://www.isas.ac.jp/e/new/release/2003/02_09.html

NOZOMI Succeeds in Earth Swingby
ISAS
January 17, 2003

The Mars explorer NOZOMI launched on July 4, 1998, is now cruising in
interplanetary orbit, targeting the insertion to the Mars orbit at the end
of 2003. On December 21, 2002, the explorer came close to Earth and
successfully implemented the earth swingby. The time of its nearest
approach to Earth was at about 4:37 p.m. with a distance of approx. 30,000
km. This marked NOZOMI's return home after a long absence. At it's furthest
point, it was 360 million km away from Earth. Unfortunately, when NOZOMI
was approaching Earth, we were unable to see it from Japan. By this
swingby, the explorer deviated a little from the ecliptic plane and shifted
to the trajectory passing the north of Earth.

After encountering a large solar flare involving coronal mass ejections on
April 21, 2002, that damaged equipment and caused its power system to
malfunction, NOZOMI has been unable to send telemetry. Scientific
observation during the cruising phase was therefore cancelled. But the
ranging function for orbit determination and command receiving are normal.
In addition, by adopting an ingenious technique that makes use the NOZOMI's
onboard autonomous capability and substituting ON/OFF beacon radio waves
for telemetry, we are able to implement attitude and orbital control. At
present we are analyzing in detail the cause of the failure and searching
for countermeasures for recovery.

NOZOMI will execute the earth swingby again on June 19, 2003, and enter
into cruising orbit inside the ecliptic plane. At the end of this year, the
explorer will be ready to enter into the Mars orbit.