Stop us if this sounds familiar. Come Saturday morning, if all
goes according to plan, a spacecraft from Earth will speed through
the Martian atmosphere in hopes of deploying its rockets,
parachutes and airbags all in sequence and touching down on the Red
Planet. Shortly after landing the rover vehicle will supposedly
deploy and start talking to another satellite from Earth orbiting
overhead.
It's the same script European Space Agency controllers hoped would
unfold without incident in the Beagle 2 mission. So far, Beagle has
failed to bark. European officials now hope that its mothership,
Mars Express, will be able to talk with Beagle once its in an orbit
low enough to facilitate communications.
No, in this case, we're talking about the first of two American
probes to land o