The Marsbot invasion begins.
In December 2003, a bread box-sized robot probe named the Beagle 2 will hit the surface of Mars. The unmanned spaceship is designed to look for life, something it can do more effectively than any astronaut.
Upon landing, its first task will be to beam back a call sign to mission control. Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist on the Beagle 2 effort - the British contribution to the European Space Agency's Mars mission - recruited the band Blur to compose a five-note blast of pure Britpop for the occasion. "It was cheaper than starting our own space program," quips bassist Alex James. The tune will be followed by a brief telecast of a painting by Damien "Severed Cow" Hirst. He has etched a series of colored dots on the Beagle 2 that will help the spacecraft readjust its supersensitive stereoscopic cameras after its six-month, 400 million-kilometer flight. The earthbound public will experience the art as the cameras rise from the probe and calibrate themselves by focusing on the dots.
After the bells and whistles, the actual work of the 66-pound, $42 million Beagle 2 will begin. Named for the ship sailed by biologist Charles Darwin, Pillinger's spacecraft carries a miniaturized chemistry lab and is designed to discover signs of life on the Red Planet. Since the Beagle 2 will not return to Earth, it must do its work on Mars, cooking up rock and soil in a tiny oven and analyzing the fumes for telltale traces of organic chemistry. NASA's 1980 Viking mission to Mars only took surface samples, says Pillinger. "And the consensus then was, if you don't see any organic matter, then where's the basis for life?"
But Pillinger believes that soil samples from underneath the surface are key. These will be dug up by a tiny, 2-pound gizmo called the Mole. Developed by DLR German Aerospace Center, the Mole will roam outside the mother ship on a 12-foot leash, using a tiny jackhammer to burrow into the Martian crust.
