 After almost 12 years, the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 lander has finally been found. But we still don't really know what happened to it, but it's still a really good story and it's a story we're going to look at today on Vintage Space. The Beagle 2 lander, named for the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, was part of the Mars Express mission. It was a simple but sophisticated spacecraft designed to look for life on Mars through geochemical and atmospheric analysis. But it never got a chance to look for life, at least not that we know of. The mission landed but never phoned home. But now, after 12 years of searching the rough landing area, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and specifically the high-rise camera on that spacecraft has spotted what looks like Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars. So here's what should have happened, and here's what might have gone wrong. The mission called for Beagle 2 to land in Isidus Planitia, a low-altitude landing site that meant the entry could take advantage of more aerodynamic braking. The entry descent and landing was pretty standard. An aeroshell with a heat shield would protect the spacecraft during atmospheric entry. A drug parachute would deploy first, slightly slowing the spacecraft down, and pulling out a main parachute. Then, a tenth of the mile above the surface, airbags would inflate around the lander. It's the same type of landing the Murr Rover speared an opportunity made in 2004. The airbags would cushion the spacecraft as it hit the surface, bouncing and rolling until it naturally came to a stop. Once stopped, regardless of its orientation, by virtue of opening its cover, the spacecraft would ride itself and then start the science. But that didn't happen. The last contact ESA had with the lander was on December 19th of 2003, when it separated from the Mars Express orbiter. Things looked good going in for a landing, but there was no telemetry collected during landing. Scientists would have to wait for a signal from the surface to know that it got there safe, and that signal just never came. The high-rise images show the lander and what looks like the parachute on the surface, so we can probably rule the parachute out as the failure point of the landing. But another possible fail point is the airbags. The airbags were actually only tested once. They were inflated and dropped onto a level surface, hardly the type of environment you would find on Mars. By contrast, NASA tested the airbags for the Murrovers hundreds of times on different types of surface at different angles. But finding Beagle 2 is kind of a step in the right direction. At least we now know that it made it down to the surface and didn't completely fail and smashed to create a crater on Mars. So what do you guys think about finally finding Beagle 2 after all these years? Let me know in the comments below. Want more vintage-space content every day of the week? Follow me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space. And with new episodes going up every Tuesday and Friday, be sure to follow me right here so you never miss an episode.