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Concept
Beagle 2
Summary
The Beagle 2 is an inoperative British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. It was intended to conduct an astrobiology mission that would have looked for evidence of past life on Mars.
The spacecraft was successfully deployed from the Mars Express on 19 December 2003 and was scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on 25 December. ESA, however, received no communication from the lander at its expected landing time on Mars, and declared the mission lost in February 2004 after numerous attempts to contact the spacecraft were made.
The Beagle 2 fate remained a mystery until January 2015, when it was located on the surface of Mars in a series of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera. The images showed it landed safely but two of its four solar panels failed to deploy, blocking the spacecraft's communications antenna.
The Beagle 2 is named after , the ship that took the naturalist Charles Darwin on his round-the-world voyage.
Beagle 2 was conceived by a group of British academics headed by Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University in collaboration with the University of Leicester. The project was designed and developed by several UK academics and companies. The spacecraft's name reflects its goal of searching for signs of past or present life on Mars. According to Pillinger:
"HMS Beagle was the ship that took [Charles] Darwin on his voyage around the world in the 1830s and led to our knowledge about life on Earth making a real quantum leap. We hope Beagle 2 will do the same thing for life on Mars."
A ellipse centered on at Isidis Planitia, an enormous, flat, sedimentary basin that overlies the boundary between the ancient highlands and the northern plains of Mars, was chosen as the landing site. The lander was expected to operate for about 180 days and an extended mission of up to one Martian year (687 Earth days) was thought possible.
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