And in today’s Beagle 2 news, the official site has a large update on the current strategies being employed by the ‘Think Tank’. To summarise:

“The Dish” at Stanford University will be used tonight to try to pick up any radio emissions (and maybe, just maybe, radiation from the microprocessor).

In case the clock is out of sync with broadcasts, the team are negotiating with dishes on the other hemisphere, which can monitor at times UK based equipment cannot.

On December 30th ten scheduled communications will have failed, so B2 will switch to ‘Search Mode 1′, which as far as I can tell increases the power. If ten further attempts are unsuccesful, it’ll switch into “Search Mode 2′, which broadcasts throughout the martian day rather than at pre-programmed times (although this is still based on the internal clock, I think). That’ll be on January 5th, by which time Mummy will have arrived.

If all else fails, they may send a ‘blind’ command. If B2 is stuck under a rock or something, then a blind command could tell it to use its hinge in an attempt to escape. However this is very risky, and might break things, so isn’t going to be tried for a while yet.