2 elements contributed to the Beagle 2 failure.

The first of these was the confused commercial model which interferred with funding. Last time I interviewed anyone on this, Satchi had it all in hand . But in the event, the Beagle 2 team refused to sell exclusive imagery rights.

The team always did say that the commerical aspects would not interfere with the "science", and in the end they did not - without sufficient funds provided by a clearly defined commercial strategy, there was no science....

Second, the ballistic entry capsule technology and modeling was inadequate. The team had no expericence in this, as they had no access to weapons delivery technologies, and this was fatal.

The end result of both Beagle 2, and NASA's failure to commercialize the MER imagery, is that the private market for Mars rovers is still too inadequately defined to enable its development.

ep