Scientists revise plans to trace Beagle 2

UK scientists were forced to revise their plans to track down the missing Beagle 2 today – just as America celebrated the Nasa probe’s successful landing on Mars.

Both Britain and the US launched separate missions to try and uncover signs of life on the Red Planet.

Nasa’s Spirit rover probe landed in a crater just south of the planet’s equator around 4.35am Irish time and has already beamed pictures back to Earth.

In contrast to the triumphant US mission, nothing has been heard from the British-built Beagle 2 since its scheduled landing on Mars on Christmas Day.

It successfully separated from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter on December 19, but attempts to track the probe using powerful radio telescopes have failed.

Today scientists admitted Mars Express – the best way of making contact with the probe – was in the wrong place.

Last week mission controllers redirected Mars Express closer to the planet’s poles, to push it into a lower orbit where it will be able to listen for the missing Beagle 2.

But they were forced to devise a new communications strategy because it is not in the orbit they originally expected it to be.

Professor Colin Pillinger, Beagle 2’s lead scientist, congratulated the successful Nasa mission.

“It goes without saying that we congratulate them and wish them every luck,” he said.

“That isn’t to say we have in any shape or form given up on Beagle 2.”

Speaking at a press conference in central London Prof Pillinger said he hoped to establish contact with Beagle 2 on Wednesday.

He said there would be “a real pull-out attempt on January 7 to get in touch with our spacecraft”.

He added: “This is the best chance we have. If our best chance doesn’t work we really have to start believing that time is running out.”

Dr Mark Sims, Beagle 2’s mission manager, said: “We should not be giving up hope. Only if we don’t pick anything up in auto transmit at that point should we give up.”

Asked what the chances of success were now he said: “I am not a betting man. We will go through the whole process and only when we go through all the options do we give up.”

Nasa’s orbiting Mars Odyssey has been searching in vain for a signal from Beagle 2.

Efforts by researchers using powerful radio telescopes at the Jodrell Bank observatory in England and Stanford University in California have also failed.

Beagle scientists have made 11 programme passes – attempts to communicate with Beagle 2 through Odyssey and Jodrell Bank – all of which have failed.

Scientists said the blind command method – another attempt at communication - had also failed.

Beagle 2 could now be in “mode one or mode two” search modes, where it realises that there is a problem and sends out a new transmission signal.

Once Mars Express is in the right place, it is hoped the orbiter will sweep as low as 125-155 miles from the surface, and use its powerful radar to search for signs of water or ice on the planet during its expected two years of surveying.

The mission, launched from Kazakhstan on a Russian booster rocket on June 2, is intended to look for signs of past or present life on Mars, which scientists think may once have had enough water to sustain living organisms.

Mars Express will also map the surface with a high-resolution camera and relay data from Beagle, if it is found.

In the US, Nasa administrator Sean O’Keefe relished the success which came just 11 months after the Columbia space shuttle disaster that killed seven astronauts.

“This is a big night for Nasa – we are back!,” he said. “I’m very, very proud of this team and we’re on Mars.”

“It’s an absolutely incredible accomplishment.”

He then toasted the mission team with champagne he said he had been saving for more than 20 years.

A range of black and white images were transmitted from Spirit including a sweeping panoramic of the Martian landscape, as well as a bird’s-eye view of the rover with its solar panels fully deployed.

“This just keeps getting better and better. The pictures are fantastic,” said mission science manager John Callas.

The £545 million project also includes a twin rover, Opportunity, which is due to arrive on Mars on January 24.

The Spirit probe is a six-wheeled vehicle about the size of a golf cart equipped to play the role of a geological explorer.

Engineering-wise, it is a far more complex animal than Britain’s Beagle 2 which was designed to carry out experiments at one spot.

In contrast, Spirit will be free to roam, observing its surroundings through a pair of cameras perched on the end of a long “neck”.

As well as stereoscopic vision, the rover has an extendable arm fitted with tools for grinding out and examining rock samples.

But unlike Beagle 2, Spirit is not designed to look for direct signs of life.

Instead, it will search for the most likely places where life may have existed in the past.

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission is part of a long-term Nasa strategy which will later involve collecting samples and bringing them back to Earth.