Most of the JPL people that I've talked to think that Beagle 2's chances are poor. Beagle 2's aeroshell is based upon the Huygen aeroshell (a 60 deg. sphere cone). However Huygen was designed for Titan's nitrogen atmosphere while Beagle 2 is going to Mars (carbon dioxide atmosphere). Beagle 2 should be using a 70 deg. sphere cone as was used by Viking, Pathfinder, MPL and MER. Because the aeroshell is insufficiently blunt, its parachute deployment altitude will be lower than it should be. That means it will have less time for the parachute swing to damp down or for the parachute to reach terminal velocity it there is a hangup on parachute deployment. Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) technology of Beagle 2 is very similar to the design used by the Soviet Mars probes. The Soviet design did not have a single success ("unblemished with success" is how one would call it). Also the development of Beagle 2's airbags had "issues". The first set popped when they were ground tested. Rumor has it the revised design was not ground tested (ran out of money?). I would argue that Beagle 2 was underfunded by at least a factor 3. About $50 million was spent on Beagle 2 which is Europe's first attempt to land on Mars. The British / Europeans should have spent at least $150 billion on Beagle 2 with most of the money spent on flight tests of the EDL system with emphasis on air bag development. The EDL technology behind America's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) is based upon flight proven designs and well tested. However the British design has no flight heritage. A low ball mission might work if it was leveraged against a flight proven technology which is not the case with Beagle 2. British aerospace engineers are among the best in the world. However even they would be hard pressed to turn what is really a first-cut engineering prototype into viable flight hardware.

I'm reminded of a Chuck Yeager quote: "I'd rather be lucky than good". Let's hope Beagle 2 gets lucky.

Gary