Spaceflight

NASA has offered to photograph potential Beagle 2 crash sites using the 200mm (7.87in)-resolution HiRise camera on its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe. An 18.5m (60.6ft)-wide crater within the UK-built European Space Agency probe’s landing ellipse has been identified as a possible site. It was located in images taken in February and April last year by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. Contact with Beagle 2 was lost in December 2003 as the lander entered the Martian atmosphere.