Farewell mother, next stop Mars for Britain’s Beagle

IT IS the first British-led mission to Mars, and yesterday it began the critical last leg of its 250 million-mile journey.

The space probe Beagle 2 successfully detached itself from its mother ship and is now on course to land on the Red Planet on Christmas Day.

Over the following six months it will carry out a series of tests to establish once and for all whether there is or ever has been life on our neighbouring planet.

Experts believe the unmanned mission carried out on the relatively tight budget totalling 100 million could revolutionise the approach to exploring other planets.

‘With this we are establishing a leadership role in the use of robotics for space exploration, which, rather than manned exploration, is probably the way to go,’ declared Science Minister Lord Sainsbury.

He and Prince Andrew were among guests at the Royal Geographical Society in London which was linked live to mission control in Germany.

The announcement by flight director Mike McKay at the European Space Agency centre in Darmstadt was greeted with cheers. He said: ‘ Fantastic news. We can confirm Beagle 2 separated successfully.’ Beagle 2, which is smaller than a dustbin lid, was designed and built almost exclusively in Britain at a cost of only 50million in the six years since the ESA announced its intention to send a spacecraft, the Mars Express, into orbit around the planet.

The Mars Express itself was launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2 this year.

Yesterday marked the crucial point at which the probe was released from the Mars Express to cruise the final 1.7million miles to the surface at a speed of 12,500mph.

Professor Colin Pillinger, the brains behind the project, said: ‘We are playing a two-legged match and both legs are a long way from home.

‘But we have got a 1-0 result at halftime and look forward to the second half on Mars on Christmas Day.’ Professor Pillinger and colleagues faced a tense two-and-a-half-hour wait after the signal was sent for the probe to separate at 8.31am, before hearing confirmation of its success.

The ‘spin and ejection’ manoeuvre was critical.

Had it failed, there would have been no landing while the Mars Express would not have entered the right orbit. But the mechanism worked perfectly, spinning Beagle 2 which is named after Charles Darwin’s ship of discovery HMS Beagle to keep it stable as it heads for Mars.

The probe has how shutdown all its onboard systems to conserve energy except for a single clock that will tell it when to begin its complex landing manouevre. Since it has no propulsion system of its own it had to be set on exactly the right course by the Mars Express to reach its landing spot of Isidis Planitia, north of the Martian equator.

This lowland basin has been identified as an area where there may once have been or may still be water and therefore possibly life. It will reach Mars at 2.54am on Christmas morning, running on a battery pack for the first few hours before switching to solar power.

Mars Express will act as a communication go-between, sending messages to and from ground control to Beagle 2.

Lord Sainsbury said: ‘Around 18million of Government money went towards Beagle 2 and in terms of value for money I think it’s outstanding because this has been done on an incredibly tight budget that has stimulated-people into some very, very clever ways of solving problems.’ Not since Nasa’s twin Viking landers produced inconclusive results in 1976 has a spacecraft been sent to Mars specifically to look for signs of life.

Two thirds of American and Russian missions to Mars have ended in failure.

Beagle 2 should reach Mars ahead of the latest 400million American mission, due to touchdown in January.

Nasa’s two Mars Rovers, both the size of golf carts, will spend three months carrying out geological surveys but are not equipped to search for life.

r.yapp@dailymail.co.uk