Thermal design for the Beagle 2 landed test environment

Beagle 2 is a British-led mission to place a scientific Lander on Mars to search for evidence of past or present life and to conduct geochemical and environmental investigations. It was launched aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express on 2 June 2003. During 2002 tests were undertaken at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, to verify the Lander thermal design under simulated Martian environmental conditions. A pre-requisite was the design and commissioning of the test facility required to achieve the stringent test requirements. This paper describes the development of the test facility and the supporting thermal design and analysis.