Mars Express has revealed the Red Planet in stunning new ways

ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

The Mars Express spacecraft (and lander) was the first interplanetary mission fully developed by the European Space Agency, representing both a failure and a spectacular success for the continent. It launched on June 3, 2003.

The failure came up front, when the British-built Beagle 2 lander never phoned home after it was sent to the surface on Christmas Day, 2003. More than a decade later, scientists discovered that two of the lander's four solar panels had failed to deploy, which blocked the antenna the lander was to use to communicate with the Mars Express spacecraft.

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from Ars Technica https://ift.tt/2JbmTM8