European scientists refuse to give up on Beagle 2. But they
admit, there's not a lot they can do to spur it into speaking to
them until its mothership, Mars Express, enters a low polar orbit
January 4th.
"That is the communication line that has been tried and tested,"
said Gill Ormrod, spokeswoman for the British government's physics
and astronomy research agency. "Until they have tried that several
times, they will not give up."
It was the first American spacecraft ever to dock with another.
Twenty-eight years later, Gemini 6 is back in the shop at a Kansas
museum, on its way to its final repository in Oklahoma.
The capsule looks tiny when compared to the Apollo relics of the
1960s and 1970s, or the space shuttles in the current NASA fleet.
But getting it ready for permanent display has been a grueling,
painstaking task for Jim Remar at the Kansas Cosmosphere in
Hutchinson (KS). Remar and two other restorers have spent about 200
hours over the past few months, carefully cleaning the spacecraft's
exterior.
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