The inquiry into why Beagle 2 was doomed released a summary of its report today.
Ironically, Beagle 2's ambitious scientific goals - to search directly for signs of Martian life - may have played a role in the mission's undoing. The summary states: "the very high potential scientific benefits of the project may have contributed to a collective institutional underestimate by us all of [how] to identify and mitigate the risks [resulting from] the very tight financial, mass and schedule constraints".The tight time constraint arose because Beagle 2 had to be ready to launch on Mars Express, which itself was assembled in record time to take advantage of the close approach between Mars and Earth in 2003.
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