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That would be 'Leicester, the Beagle has landed' - the whole thing is being controlled from the National Space Centre in Leicester, where you can actually go and watch the control centre in action.

Although actually it's going to announce itself by playing a tune by Blur, as well as using a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the cameras.

Yes you're right - I think it's more a case of the Beagle 2 team negotiating with NASA though.

You havn't by any chance an URL ? Or are they not published yet ?

You can find it here.

The bright spot on the left-hand side of this picture is the back side of Beagle 2, slowly drifting away from Mars Express. This image, taken this morning (19-Dec-2003) at 9:33 CET, shows the lander when it was about 20 metres away from the mother spacecraft, on its way to Mars. - ESA, 19 Dec. 2003

Here is a link to the seperation picture of Beagle 2 taken by Mars Express

Also, how do you sterilise something for space, when you look at the conditions in Jupiter space (radiation etc.) they sound more hostile than anything you could easily subject things to on Earth. I guess the interior spaces of the probe could be a problem?

Beagle 2 is carrying a Damien Hirst spot painting for colour calibration. It will be interesting to see how mars-news.de weasels round that

The Beagle 2 has a microscope with 6 micron resolution: beagle 2: cameras

pretty good actually the presence of oxygen is a dead giveaway :-) :-). Seriously though there is a lot of microbial life even in the Sahara (which is actually quite wet compaired to some places esp the polar deserts)

Beagle 2 has a mole to do just that!

Its strange, under the useful links the Guradain didn't list the beagle 2 own web page.

Talking of shitty artists, I noticed this sundial is the equivalent of the spot painting on Beagle II. The Beagle II device is also intended for camera calibration, but they had theirs made by Brit-artist Damien Hirst, styled after his spot paintings that can be seen in places like Lot 61 in NY.

A lot of people think Hirst might just be spending his whole life taking the piss.

Sure, but for only about 40 seconds at a time. That's not very useful if you want to study something in zero-gravity for more than 40 seconds, say something growing, or an animal doing something.

Also remember that just because a scientific experiment is being performed doesn't automatically require humans present. The Beagle2 probe, which will land on Mars later this year, contains lots of scientific equipment for in-situ analysis.

Even so, NASA needs people in space. Science almost demands it. Scientists can do a lot up there. However, sending people to space as political leverage or to make good TV footage is a serious mis-use of technology, which could have been used to further humanity.

videophones have been around for a while in the UK and in other countries(seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.

moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA has planned in 25 years, NASA tried and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble, Galileo, Beagle 2)

food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein and creatine supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )

cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars have been developed, which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)

jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond). You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them if you want. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.

moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro stations. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.

This post brought to you by Google.com, paid for by Google For America, Inc.

This question implies that space exploration in the past was dominated by the two superpowers. From a manned spaceflight perspective, this implication is quite correct; but from an unmanned perspective, it is rather inaccurate. Over the last three decades, a large proportion of the activity in unmanned space exploration has been undertaken by countries other than two superpowers. And let's not forget that, unlike most unmanned misisons, the moon race was about politics, not science.

Looking towards the future, quite a bit of the exploration of our solar system involves both USA/Russia and other countries, either in collaboration or in competition. Particular missions to keep an eye on include:

• Beagle 2 , the probe onboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission. Beagle 2 is scheduled to touch down on Mars this December, and amongst its tasks it will be searching for life, using techniques far more accurate than the previous tests by the Viking Lander probes. Mars Express, the spacecraft carring Beagle 2, blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Russian-built rocket earlier this year; movies of the launch can be found here
• Two Mars Exploration Rovers , which are robots based on NASA's very successful 1997 Pathfinder mission. The two rovers are due for touchdown in January 2004; they are targeted at analysing the geology of Mars.
• Cassini , a NASA probe destined for Saturn. Apart from flybys by deep-space probes, we've never had a decent look at Saturn and its satellites. On-board Cassini is the Huygens probe, which will be dropped through the thick hydrocarbon atmosphere of Titan. Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons, and the only satellite in the solar system to have an atmosphere.
• MESSENGER , a NASA mission to Mercury due for launch next year, which will arrive in orbit around the innermost planet in 2009. Amongst other things, MESSENGER will ascertain whether Mercury has deposits of water ice deep within high-walled impact craters near its poles.
• Venus Express , the European Space Agency's sister misison to Mars Express, will depart for Venus in December 2005, arriving at the planet the following summer. It will analyse the atmosphere and the surface of the planet, and hopefully explain the anomalous chemical compositions within the atmosphere, which some have suggested are due to microbial life.

So, we can see that there is a lot going on at the moment in the field of space exploration. Over the past few days, I've been watching HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon", and its made me regret that I wasn't alive during the space race. But, on reflection, there is plenty going on right now to get excited about!

They have panoramic colour stereo cameras which will be sending LOTS of pictures back to Earth.

Each robot also comes with a microscope camera which will be used to return images of polished rock surfaces. The robot will drill into rocks, clean off any surface erosion and grind out a flat surface. The microscope camera will take a picture for analysis back on Earth.

Additionally, each rover is carrying a thermal emission spectrometer which is used to determine rock composition from their thermal characteristics. They have been tuned to look for carbonates and clay minerals both of which require water for formation.

There is also a MÃssbauer spectrometer, a device designed to look for iron-rich minerals (we suspect the surface of Mars is red because of iron compounds). This will also help determine the magnetic characteristics of the Martian soil.

Finally, there is an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer which is used to determine the presence of rare earth and actinide elements in the rocks and soil.

The rovers will not be looking for water or life. For that, there is the Beagle 2 lander, already en-route to Mars.

Hope that helps.
Mike.

There is a stereo camera on Beagle 2. There were also two cameras on Mars Pathfinder which were used to produce stereo panoramas.

FYI the Beagle2 probe is named after the HMS Beagle that carried Darwin on his world travels, whence he galvanised his ideas on the origin of species

The HMS Beagle though, was named after a dog

I think that, out of all the missions the article mentions, Mars Express is the most exciting. This mission, which is backed by the European Space Agency (rather than NASA, as the article implies), carries the British-built Beagle 2 lander, targeted at looking for evidence for Martian life, past and present. Beagle 2 (named after Charles Darwin's ship) is far more sensitive than the old Viking Missions, which were the first (and so far, the only) missions to look for life. It's worth noting that the more-recent Pathfinder mission was a proof-of-concept for the two upcoming Mars Exploration Rovers, which are for geological surveys rather than life searches.

One partcularly cool feature of Beagle 2 is its "Mole", which can crawl across the surface (at 1cm/s) and burrow imto the ground or under boulders. The Mole will be able to take samples from locations which the Viking landers couldn't reach; these samples may provide conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Mars Express, carrying Beagle 2, is due to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2. Fingers crossed!

I think that, out of all the missions the article mentions, Mars Express is the most exciting. This mission, which is backed by the European Space Agency (rather than NASA, as the article implies), carries the British-built Beagle 2 lander, targeted at looking for evidence for Martian life, past and present. Beagle 2 (named after Charles Darwin's ship) is far more sensitive than the old Viking Missions, which were the first (and so far, the only) missions to look for life. It's worth noting that the more-recent Pathfinder mission was a proof-of-concept for the two upcoming Mars Exploration Rovers, which are for geological surveys rather than life searches.

One partcularly cool feature of Beagle 2 is its "Mole", which can crawl across the surface (at 1cm/s) and burrow imto the ground or under boulders. The Mole will be able to take samples from locations which the Viking landers couldn't reach; these samples may provide conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Mars Express, carrying Beagle 2, is due to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2. Fingers crossed!

Clickable link

But they're heading to Mars in the Beagle2 soon!

The Brits did actually engineer some good rockets like the The Black Arrow etc, and Prospero satellites in the 70's, the problem was with funding not the engineering, one of their rockets handled a massive payload if I remember correctly. They've maintained their military satellites from very early on, a new constellation of their SkyNet satellites have been launched over the last 18 months or so.

Ariane 5 has only failed once before, on its maiden test flight in 1996, the Ariane programme has quite a good record actually, only eight of its 141 missions have ended in failure since its start in 1979. Not too bad a track record considering they lead the commercial launching sector.

The last Arine mission put the birds into too low an orbit, they recovered one but with the result of shortening its life span (had to use up fuel to get it back into acceptable orbit), the other Japanese Bsat-2B bird was a lost cause. Lets just hope they get the Beagle 2 into orbit ok next year.

I'm not French, or colonially French, if I were I'd be bitch about them setting of huge fireworks in French Guiana.

Maybe we can get the Europeans to launch Triana... the House would love that.

The project aims to land a 30kg (pounds? hope not another ESA blunder) lander onto the surface of Mars.

For more informaiton see also the Mars Society site and space.com

They've gone with a completely different approach to testing for life than the Viking landers, whose results were hard to interpret. (Some of the Viking results were what you'd expect if there were bacteria, and other results were what you'd expect if there weren't. See this Slashdot discussion.) It's going to test for traces of methane in the atmosphere, which would be a strong indicator of subterranean microbes. It's also going to analyze how much of the carbon in soil samples is in organic forms and how much is inorganic, and the isotope ratios of organic and inorganic carbon.

If the results are positive, it'll be one of the two or three greatest scientific discoveries of all time.