Royal Astronomical Society Press Notices

Date: 19 November 1997
For immediate release
Ref. PN 97/38

Issued by:

Dr Jacqueline Mitton
RAS Public Relations Officer
Phone: Cambridge ((0)1223) 564914
FAX: Cambridge ((0)1223) 572892
E-mail: jmitton@ast.cam.ac.uk

and

Peter Bond
Space Science Advisor
Phone: (0)1483-268672
Fax: (0)1483-274047
E-mail: 100604.1111@compuserve.com

UK Scientists Prepare To Board The Mars Express

UK space scientists today expressed delight after the European Space
Agency's Science Programme Committee (SPC) gave the go-ahead for
the next stage in preparing for a robotic mission to Mars. The SPC has
endorsed the Science Management Plan of the Mars Express mission as
part of the agency's Horizon 2000 Plus science programme. An
Announcement of Opportunity will be released at the beginning of
December.

Mars Express is expected to be divided into two parts: an orbiter and a
series of landers. The European Space Agency will provide the Mars
orbiter, but the landers will require separate funding. Under the leadership
of the Open University's Professor Colin Pillinger, a group of UK scientists
and engineers from the Open University, Leicester University, University
College London, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Matra Marconi
Space, together with French and German colleagues, have fought hard to
have the mission planning include a large lander that will be capable of
contributing new data to the debate about life on the Red Planet.

This consortium intends to propose its design, named Beagle 2, as a
candidate for this lander. In order to obtain soil samples from martian
environments protected from the damaging effects of solar ultraviolet light,
scientists need to probe under rocks or beneath the red, oxidised soil.
Beagle 2 would carry a small autonomous rover equipped with a mole for
burrowing into the subsurface and a mechanism for transporting samples
to the main station. In-situ analysis of the samples will substantially
improve our knowledge of martian geochemistry and will throw light on
the question of whether life existed at some stage in the planet's evolution.

Under current plans, Mars Express will be launched by a Soyuz rocket in
mid-2003, the most favourable launch opportunity to Mars in the
foreseeable future, with arrival in early 2004. Preliminary design estimates
show that the 1100 kg orbiter would be able to carry 120 kg of its own
scientific instruments and another 150-180 kg for the landers. This would
mean that the mass of Beagle 2 could be around 90 kg, an additional 90
kg being made up of two or three other landers, which would constitute a
network of seismic and weather stations.

The orbiter will also carry a number of instruments, developed with the help
of UK scientists, which were lost on the ill-fated Mars 96 mission. It will be
equipped to make geological maps at a resolution of 10 metres, to map the
surface mineral composition, study atmospheric circulation and composition,
and search for permafrost.

Contact

     Professor Colin Pillinger, Planetary Sciences Research Institute,
     Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK.
     Tel: +44 1908-652119.
     Fax: +44 1908-655910.
     E-mail: psri@open.ac.uk