As NASA scales back its immediate plans to explore Mars, its beginning to look like a brassy British-led mission might be very well be the next to plop down a spacecraft on the Red Planets surface.

NASA announced May 12 that it will send either an orbiter or lander to Mars in 2003 but could very well do neither.

Europe Boards the Mars Express

As NASA reshapes a future Mars exploration agenda, the European Space Agency is moving out on a fast-track mission, its first to the red planet.

The Beagle 2 lander will weigh in at a scant 66 pounds (30 kilograms), but is densely packed with an array of instruments designed to probe Mars for signs of life. Its name pays homage to the HMS Beagle, that ship that carried naturalist Charles Darwin on the voyage that inspired On the Origin of Species.

The Beagle 2: A little smaller than its namesake

"Were commemorating that voyage since its what told us about the evolution of life on our own planet," said Colin Pillinger, the Beagle 2 lead scientist, in a recent interview with SPACE.com. "What were trying to do is see if it extends to a second planet."

The Beagle 2 team hopes to launch the $40 million spacecraft in June 2003, tucking it aboard Soyuz/Fregat rocket with the Mars Express for the trip to Mars.

The lander would arrive at Mars that December 26, Boxing Day in Britain, shortly after being jettisoned by the Mars Express orbiter as it enters martian orbit. The Beagle 2 would use parachutes to slow its descent through the atmosphere, ultimately relying on an airbag system to cushion its landing. (If NASA opts to send a lander to Mars in 2003, it too will rely on airbags like those used on the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission.)

After landing, the circular Beagle 2 will open like a clamshell, unfolding four disc-like solar panels to produce the power needed during the 180-day mission.

"The primary objective is exobiology," Pillinger, of The Open University in Milton Keynes, said of the lander. "Did life exist in the past, does it exist now or could it exist?"

The lander will sniff the atmosphere for traces of methane, examine rock and soil samples for organic residues, study and perhaps even date for the first time martian rocks in situ and send an imaginative probe diving beneath the soil and under boulders. As many as five cameras will snap images of its surroundings.

Beagle 2s "Pluto" probe will inch across the planet's surface, its robotic arm gathering samples.

The mole-like probe, called the Planetary Undersurface Tool, or "Pluto," will use a percussive mechanism to scoot around the surface, moving a half-inch (centimeter) every six seconds.

"It taps itself along," Pillinger said.

Pluto will venture as far as 17 feet (5 meters) from the lander on its leash, digging into the surface and under rocks in a search for samples sheltered from the strong oxidizing surface. A rock corer on the landers robotic arm called the "paw" will also gather samples, relying in part on a grinder supplied by a Hong Kong dentist to scrape away the plaque-like oxidized surface that blankets surface rocks.

If nothing else, the mission will be the most hip to ever to venture to another planet.

British artist Damien Hirst whose work was featured in the recent "Sensation" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that incurred the wrath of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will contribute a painting that will be used to calibrate the landers cameras once on the surface of Mars.

And British rock group Blur has penned a composition that the spacecraft will blare back at Earth to announce its safe arrival on Mars.

To help defray the cost of the mission, only partially borne by government funding, the lander may sport a few corporate logos.

"We dont want the thing to look like a Formula One racing car, though," Pillinger said.

The spacecraft may resemble a racecar all the same: the mission team recently announced that McLaren Composites Ltd. which builds advanced composite car bodies for the Formula One circuit will contribute its expertise to making the lander impact-resistant.