We're on our way to Mars again. The Beagle II, named after Darwin's ship of
discovery and now part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft,
is scheduled to land on Mars tomorrow, on Christmas Day.

It is my understanding that a successful landing will be announced with the
words, "The Beagle has landed."

Wirt Atmar

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ESA News
<A HREF="http://www.esa.int">http://www.esa.int</A>

24 December 2003

Mars Express status report ...

At 09:30 CET today [0830 UTC], the Mars Express orbiter was 200,000
kilometres
from Mars and 156,000,000 kilometres from Earth. The orbiter is on its final
planned course for Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI).

The spacecraft will hit its intended MOI 'bull's eye' point, 414 kilometres
above the Martian surface, to within an accuracy of six kilometres.

The retargeting manoeuvre performed by ESOC Mission Control on Saturday, 20
December, was so accurate that the additional 'fine-tuning' manoeuvre
scheduled
for 23 December was judged to be unnecessary and not performed.

Mission Control is currently placing the spacecraft in its final
configuration
for MOI. The fuel tanks are being heated and the latch valves checked in
preparation for a 34-minute main engine burn, due to place the spacecraft
into
Martian orbit in the early hours of Christmas morning.

All non-essential equipment is currently being turned off to minimise the
possibility of the spacecraft entering 'safe mode'. This process is due to
conclude around 12:00 CET [1100 UTC] when the spacecraft's Solid State Mass
Memory is switched off. No further commands are due to be sent to Mars
Express
until after MOI.

Flight Director Michael McKay said, "From this point the tension really
starts
to grow. We don't have a lot more to do except watch and wait. The time
within
which we can do something reduces very rapidly.

"But if anything unexpected does occur then we would be ready to jump in and
recover the situation, applying all the professionalism and skill of the ESA
and
industrial teams gathered here at ESOC Mission Control."

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