Colin’s Beagle Found on Mars?

A press conference this Friday is expected to reveal details of the whereabouts of the Beagle 2 Mars lander, which went missing en route to the red planet on Christmas day, 2003. 

The lander, which looked a bit like two welded-together dustbin lids, was one of the many high-profile space projects headed by Kingswood-born planetary scientist Colin Pillinger.

He was also involved with the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission,  which landed a probe on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in November 2014. 

As leader of the Beagle 2 project – part of the wider Mars Exress mission – Pillinger became a household name, his distinctive white sideburns and thick Gloucestershire accent adding charm to a likeably British space mission: characterful, audacious and completed on a shoe-string budget.  

The Mars Express exploration mission’s original aim was to study the interior, surface and atmosphere of the second smallest planet in the solar system.

The mission included two key components: the missing Beagle 2 lander and the Mars Express Orbiter, which has been successfully transmitting images and mapping data since early 2004.

If all had gone to plan, Beagle 2 would have been sending home data from Mars’ surface ever since 2003, but all contact was lost with the lander shortly after it entered the planet’s atmosphere on December 25.

It was due to send a landing signal – composed by Britpop legends Blur – when it touched down. But after an axious wait for Colin and his team on Christmas morning, the signal never came.  

Now it seems that Beagle 2 may have been rediscovered – or at least its wreckage.

A spokesman for the UK Space Agency reported that the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had identified something “of interest”, but declined to provide further details ahead of Friday’s press conference. 

“HiRise is the only camera at Mars that can see former spacecraft like Beagle 2,” HiRISE scientist Shane Byrne told the Guardian. “It’s definitely pretty close to its intended landing spot, no matter what. It entered the atmosphere at the right time and place.”

Byrne and his team have a pretty good track record in lost and found work, having already located the twin Viking landers which arrived on Mars in the 1970s and captured images of Nasa’s Phoenix, Curiosity and Opportunity rovers. Monday’s Beagle announcement comes after years of searching. 

Although the news will be too late for Colin Pillinger, who died last May, it’s hoped that Friday’s press briefing will provide clues as to what went wrong during Beagle’s final moments, and provide valuable insights for future missions.

Photo: All Rights Reserved Beagle 2