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FAREWELL 2004: Mars Probe`Beagle' Not About

Posted on: Sunday, 26 December 2004, 09:00 CST

It was supposed to look for signs of life on Mars. Then it stopped showing signs of life itself.

Built on a "shoestring" budget of pounds 45m, space probe Beagle 2 was designed to put Britain at the centre of the international space programme. Our first voyage to another planet began on 2 June 2003, when the craft hitched a ride with the European Space Agency's Mars Explorer.

The six-month, 250,000,000-mile journey to the Red Planet was timed to end on Christmas Day, when the clam-shaped lander, named after Charles Darwin's ship of discovery, was due to detach itself from the Explorer and boldly go about taking pictures, digging for soil samples and analysing whatever it could find for signs of life. It was a proudly British sort of spacecraft. And, of course, it didn't work properly.

It seems likely that Beagle 2 reached Mars, touching down just after 3am on the appointed day. But after that, silence. Attempts to detect its faint electronic bark using a US probe already orbiting the planet, and giant radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank, near Manchester, failed.

On 8 January, after a fortnight's fruitless attempts to make contact, the mission was abandoned. "I have to say this is a setback," said Professor David Southwood, director of science at the European Space Agency. "It makes me feel very sad."

Source: Independent on Sunday, The

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