Beagle 2 was considered only a possibility until UK science minister Lord Sainsbury announced last week that the government would contribute about $8 million toward the estimated $40-million mission cost, said Beagle 2 project leader Colin Pillinger, a planetary scientist at the Open University near London.
"Previously, there was no money available for this project," Pillinger said. "So this apparently sends a very strong message that this project is important enough to actually find the money to support it. Lord Sainsbury putting out hard cash means we can actually proceed with building hardware and cutting metal," he said.
Pillinger, has been crusading to raise cash and in-kind contributions to the project, which until last week had no governmental funding. The project has been a cooperative venture between various university, industry, and research institutions, each pledging to provide different components and labor.
The new government money augments an estimated $25 million worth of support already pledged or contributed to the project. The total cost of the project will not be known, Pillinger said, until the design phase is complete later this year.
When it lands on Mars, The flying-saucer-shaped Beagle 2 will open like a clam to deploy solar arrays and to release a 1.3-pound (600-gram) robotic "mole" capable of burrowing underground. The mole, which will be driven not by wheels, but by a percussive mechanism, will crawl across the surface until it reaches a large boulder. It will then burrow beneath the rock in an attempt to reach soil or rock material that has been protected from surface oxidation.
That, Pillinger said, is where any signs of martian life may hide. Instruments aboard Beagle 2 will analyze the composition of martian rocks to try to determine whether life ever existed on the planet, and if it did, when.
"We're going to try to recreate the experiment that is accepted on Earth as showing that life began 3.9 billion years ago," Pillinger said, adding that the mission would also perform experiments to help determine the chemical composition and age of the surface rocks.
Beagle 2 may stand out not only for its high scientific goals, but also for the creative financing of its builders. Pillinger said the craft may be the first spacecraft to carry advertisements into space. If it is necessary to fund the mission, ad space may be available on the parachutes that are to break Beagle's fall. This would make Beagle 2 not only the first British craft to land on another planet, but the first spacecraft to carry advertisements beyond the bounds of Earth.
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