Update for 10 p.m. EST, Friday: Still no word from Beagle-2 after a fourth attempt to tune in its signal. The Jodrell Bank Observatory did not hear the probe Friday night. More attempts were planned throughout the weekend.
PARIS -- NASA's Mars Odyssey satellite today made a second attempt at picking up signs of life from Europe's Beagle-2 Mars lander, again without success.
But Beagle-2 program managers vow they are not giving up hope that the lander, which presumably arrived on Mars' surface early Christmas Day, has survived and will ultimately send word to one of the several antennas seeking confirmation that it is functioning.
``It's like sending somebody a love letter, and you know they got it and you're waiting for a response,'' said Professor Colin Pillinger, the day after the tiny craft was supposed to have landed on the surface of Mars, opened its solar panels and called home.
Pillinger, chief scientist for the Beagle, told a news conference the team was just beginning the search for the craft.
"The mood here is still optimistic," Beagle-2 project team spokesman Peter Barratt said in a telephone interview. "And remember that the Mars Express satellite will begin looking for Beagle-2 soon and that satellite was specially designed to pick up Beagle-2 signals."
The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit on Christmas Day. Starting Jan. 4, it will begin searching for Beagle-2.
Until then, NASA's Odyssey craft will continue to make daily passes over the area where Beagle-2 is presumed to have landed in search of the 33-kilogram robot, which is designed to search for evidence of past or present life on Mars.
Also each day, Britain's 76-meter Lovell radio telescope, at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, will listen for Beagle-2 signals for an hour or more each evening.
"Our understanding is that we have access to Jodrell Bank pretty much as long as we need," Barratt said. "They have been very supportive." The Jodrell telescope's next Beagle vigil is tonight, ending at 7 p.m. EST (2400 GMT)).
Meanwhile, the good news is that Mars Express did successfully enter orbit over the Red Planet. In addition to acting as a communications relay station for Beagle-2, it also is to map the Martian surface and search for water with a powerful radar that can scan several miles underground.
In the coming days, controllers must change the orbit of Mars Express from a high elliptical one around the equator to a lower polar orbit that will let it establish contact with Beagle.
Pillinger said the mother ship could offer the best hope of reaching Beagle as, unlike Odyssey and the Jodrell telescope, its communications were specifically designed to hear the probe's transmissions.
``Those contacts are already programmed in, so we have got the on board computer and would be silly to waste them or in any way, shape or form give up until we have used them,'' he added.
Pillinger said both the Mars Odyssey link and communications using Jodrell Bank were untested.
``You have to liken this to the early days of mobile phones,'' he said. ``We've got one mobile phone, one mobile phone mast and one satellite, and we have to match these things up and it's not that easy.''
The success of the Mars Express orbit was a big boost to the European program.
European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin called it a ``fantastic achievement,'' whether scientists get any transmissions from the Beagle 2 craft or not.
``Even if not all parts of the mission have succeeded, we must still acknowledge its significance, and build upon the experience gained to ensure higher chances of success in the future,'' the European Union official said in Brussels.
``The Mars Express project is a good illustration of what Europe can achieve, on this planet and beyond, if it works together,'' he said in a statement. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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