re: attention---belly the beagle has landed Beagle Mars probe...

re: attention---belly the beagle has landed Beagle Mars probe awaits sponsors

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor



Can Colin Pillinger find sponsorship?
Beagle 2, the British-led mission to land on Mars and look for life, has yet to attract any firm sponsors, BBC News Online has learned.

The pioneering mission is being funded by a combination of grants and loans from space agencies, research councils, manufacturers and the UK Government, among others.

But despite being constructed and awaiting a June launch from Kazakhstan, no one has yet firmly agreed to sponsor the probe.

The force behind Beagle, Colin Pillinger of the Open University, remains optimistic.

He told BBC News Online: "The main action will be in December when it lands; interest will be enormous."

Looking for life

The Beagle 2 lander on Mars has been praised as a magnificent engineering achievement, put together against the odds, to a tight deadline and on a shoestring budget. No one has ever done anything quite like it before.

It was initially a dream of Professor Pillinger, and from its first design on a beer mat in 1997, the concept has been turned into reality in record time.

The feat has been attributed to a team led by Prof Pillinger, Mark Sims of Leicester Space Centre, and Jim Clemmet of Astrium UK, the spacecraft's manufacturer.


Danien Hurst's calibration painting
Following its June launch it will parachute and bounce on Mars before opening and leaning a multi-instrumented arm against a Martian rock to look for life.

A small mole will also burrow beneath the surface.

But alongside the design, construction and testing of Beagle 2 has been an initiative led almost single-handedly by Professor Pillinger to raise the money needed for the mission.

This has involved keeping Beagle 2 almost constantly in the public eye and getting on board publicity friendly participants such as the pop group Blur and artist Damien Hirst.

Blur wrote Beagle's call-sign and Damien Hirst designed Beagle's calibration chart.

But, as the 1990 Juno Anglo-Russian project to sponsor a Briton in space showed, getting sponsorship in Britain for space projects can be difficult.

Professor Pillinger told BBC News Online: "Everyone knew there was an element of risk, and it's not over yet."

No logos

Even though the engineers can now take a rest as Beagle awaits lift-off, Professor Pillinger must maintain the public profile.


Arrival December 2003
"The underwriters are as pleased as they can be under the circumstances. I am not giving up. No one expects me to give up and no one has asked me to give up," he says.

There is still time for sponsors to get on board for the launch.

"It's not too late," says Professor Pillinger, who cautions that a launch is a moment's exposure whereas the real story will come in December when Beagle lands on Mars.

One thing he has discounted is selling logos to be put on the spacecraft.

Logos were a journalist's fiction, he says. "It was never a case of 'put your logo here'. The engineers would never have stood for it and we wouldn't waste valuable scientific data sending back pictures of logos."

But the name of the mission is a different matter.

"Early on I was told that an idea would be to sell the name of the mission. It's still there if anybody wants it."

Professor Pillinger is looking forward to December when, if all goes well, Beagle 2 will sift the sands of Mars for signs of life, knowing that if it finds it, it will be one of the biggest scientific stories of all time.