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Mars mission in jeopardy

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON DEC. 25. The fate of Britain's first space mission to Mars plunged into uncertainty today when Beagle 2, the tiny probe vehicle, failed to confirm that it had landed, raising fears that it might have met the same fate as previous American and Russian probes to the red planet.

Scientists, who sat up all night at the mission's London headquarters to hear the news of the "Christmas Day landing", were greeted by silence from the barbecue-shaped probe, and as minutes ticked past the scheduled landing time hopes started to fade, though officially the mission has not been abandoned.

Beagle 2 was to have landed at 2.54 a.m. (U.K. time) and the first signal was expected at about 6.30 a.m. But what was to have been a "historic" moment ended in gloom. Though the British team, which had conceived the idea, bravely said that it was "not the end of the world", scientists admitted that if the mission had indeed failed it would be a setback. They were hoping for a second contact later at night, but were not very optimistic.

"We're hoping against hope that we do actually get something from Beagle today," said Andrew Coates, one of the scientists on the project.

"Getting the signal tonight is going to be absolutely crucial in knowing whether it's alive or not.''

Colin Pillinger, head of the British Mars team, said: "We're not downhearted yet".

But he admitted the possibility that Beagle 2 might have been blown off course by dust clouds and storms that regularly hit Mars, which has earned it the dubious reputation of being the "graveyard'' of space missions.

The state-of-the art Beagle 2 is on a 180-day mission to look for signs of life — past or present — on Mars and until Friday everything seemed to be on course when it separated from its mothership, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft.

Experts said the probe was no bigger than a dustbin lid and packed with state-of-the-art technology complete with an extendable arm for gathering samples and an on-board laboratory equipped to detect chemical signs for life.

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