NASA Finds No Signal From Mars Lander

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars failed on Friday to pick up a signal that would confirm the survival of the European Mars lander Beagle 2, a British agency said.

The Beagle, designed to search for signs of life on Mars, is believed to have landed shortly before 10 p.m. EST Wednesday, but three efforts to pick up its signal have now failed.

“There is no signal from Beagle 2 detected by Mars Odyssey passing over this evening,” Peter Barrett, spokesman for the government’s physics and astronomy research agency, said Friday evening.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey, which has been in orbit since 2001, had the first shot at communicating early on Thursday, but picked up nothing. The vast Lovell radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England, also failed to detect Beagle’s call sign, despite scanning the Martian surface late Thursday.

Friday evening’s overflight by the Mars Odyssey then completed its pass over the landing site without detecting.

Another communication session from Jodrell Bank would be attempted Friday evening.

The agency said it hoped a Stanford University radiotelescope in California would be able to listen for the carrier signal on Saturday.