Features / Colin Pillinger
Remembering the Bristol scientist who played a key role in a Mars landing
On the surface of Mars is Beagle 2, a reminder of the genius of a world class planetary scientist from Kingswood.
Professor Colin Pillinger’s Beagle 2 lander went missing en route to the red planet in 2003 for what was meant to be a search for life.
But after having been declared lost, it was remarkably discovered in 2015, the year after Pillinger died.
is needed now More than ever
Images taken by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that Beagle 2 had landed on the surface of Mars but failed to fully deploy its solar panels meaning that it could not communicate with Earth.
Beagle 2 landed on Mars’ Isidis Planitia basin, within the same Syrtis Major quadrangle which contains the Jezero Crater where Nasa’s Perseverance successfully landed on Thursday.
The idea for Beagle 2 was sketched initially on the back of a beer mat, with a piece of music specially composed by Blur meant to be the probe’s signal back to Earth when it landed on Mars.
Born in 1943, Pillinger grew up in Kingswood where he attended the former Kingswood Grammar School before studying chemistry at Swansea University.
At Swansea he helped put samples of the Moon taken by Apollo 11 though a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer – with Beagle 2 due to collect rock samples from Mars that would be analysed by a mass spectrometer and gas chromatograph in the body of the lander.
He continued with research at the University of Bristol and then at Cambridge University, before joining the Open University in 1984 where he became professor of planetary science.
Known for his mutton-chop sideburns and lilting West Country burr, Pillinger’s luxury item when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2009 was a picture of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
He told presenter Sue Lawley: “I’m not actually Bristolian. I was born a few yards outside the boundary in a place called Kingswood. But I want something to remind me of Bristol so I’ll take a picture of the Clifton Suspension Bridge because Brunel was one of my heroes and he wasn’t from Bristol either, he was an outsider.”
Pillinger’s Gardens in Redland is named after the famous scientist – photo: Martin Booth
“There is every chance that the (Beagle 2) camera flipped up and began taking images after the landing,” joked Andrew Coates, who was the lead investigator on Beagle 2’s stereo camera system.
“All we need is an astronaut and a USB stick to go and get them.”
Main photo: Open University
Read more: 10 things you probably didn’t know about Bristol’s space connections
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