Beagle has landed: Missing spacecraft found on Mars

A British spacecraft which disappeared as it approached Mars in search of alien life successfully landed on the Red Planet’s surface, scientists behind the £50m (€65m) project said.

High resolution pictures taken by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft show The Beagle 2 probe, which had not been seen or heard from since December 2003 and had been presumed destroyed, they said.

The images taken from 185 miles above Mars in 2013 and again last year show that the small lander, the size of a large motorcycle tyre, touched down successfully just 5km from its intended landing site in Isidis Planitia.

However, they believe it did not fully deploy its panels, preventing it from contacting Earth. This would make Beagle 2 the first British and European spacecraft to successfully land on Mars.

UK Space Agency chief executive Dr David Parker said: “What we can say with some confidence is that Beagle 2 is no longer lost and furthermore it seems we are not looking at a crash site.

“We have good evidence of Beagle 2 resting on the surface of Mars. These images are consistent with the Beagle 2 having successfully landed on Mars butonly partially deploying itself.”

Prof Mark Sims of the University of Leicester, who was mission manager of the Beagle 2 project, said he was “elated” by the Discovery, which brought them closure.

He added that the damage could have been caused by a number of issues, from damage from a heavy landing in a thin atmosphere to an airbag not rolling away and becoming stuck in the mechanism.

He added: “I think it is a bad luck scenario, I don’t think anything was wrong with the engineering, we were just unlucky.”

The revelation comes after the death of Prof Colin Pillinger, the project’s driving force, at the age of 70 in May. His daughter Shusanah said he would have been pleased at the success and able to “defy the critics who want to say that Beagle 2 is a failure”.

She added: “He would have loved that this shows Beagle 2 landed on Mars, it got all the way through the entry and descend and the processes. It unravelled some of its solar panels.

“This shows such an immense success and not forgetting all the other things that went on in the background of Beagle 2, all the promotion of science, all of the inspiration to children.

“He would love that this is in the news again. He would love that this could inspire that next generation to do Beagle 3.”