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Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so little money, and been sent on such a long journey fraught with so many dangers.
Beagle 2 has been carried to the vicinity of Mars by the Mars Express mothership, and released successfully to go its own way for the final leg of the journey.
The easy part is over.
Beagle's atmospheric entry, descent and landing on Mars on Christmas Day will be the most worrying six minutes in the history of unmanned space exploration.
It is during that time, after it strikes the upper region of Mars' atmosphere at 20,000 kilometres per hour, that engineers hope that the speed at which it was designed and built, and the technical compromises that were made, will not jeopardise the mission.
But they also know that most probes sent to Mars fail and that the Red Planet is unforgiving.
Engineers have to be good, and Beagle's are. Now it will have to be seen if they are lucky.
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The rest is here at BBC Online.
All of Gary's concerns are mentioned...
Beagle probe faces its big challenge
The whole thread (31 posts)
- Beagle probe faces its big challenge
- R WE listening or looking at the entry phase
- It appears the BBC is lurking the HabitableZone (n/t)
- Actually, that BBC author wrote a 2 hour documentary on Beagle 2 which has already aired TWICE.
- My go- man - you've led them right to us!
- Hey, BBC! Come on over to the CE board! (Heh heh heh...) (n/t)
- Lurking? Hell, that looks like plagerism!
- re: Beagle probe faces its big challenge