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Return of the Beagle

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The European Space Agency looks likely to be including technology developed by Colin Pillinger and his team onboard for a 2011 mission to Mars.

Colin Pillinger is back in business. The leader of the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission is confident many of the elements he and the

’s space researchers have proposed for

’s next trip to Mars will be included in a 2011 mission.

European space scientists announced this month they intend to launch the new mission to the planet, due to arrive in 2013, as part of ESA’s Aurora programme.

The announcement followed a two-day workshop at Aston University, organised by the UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and ESA.

Three candidate missions were considered at the meeting — ExoMars, with an orbiter and a rover; a scaled-down version known as ExoMars-Lite with just a rover; and BeagleNet, a mission building on Beagle 2 and the cancelled French Netlander project, with two landers each with their own micro rovers.

In the end the scientists decided to merge the best elements of each of the three proposals into a new mission, although how ESA will do this remains anyone’s guess.

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