Missions to Mars: a rocky road to the Red Planet
Missions to Mars may have stalled, but the search for signsof life continues by analysing the DNA of Martian meteorites, writes Roger Highfield.
Are we alone in the cosmos? For centuries, that question has been purely speculative. But in recent years scientists have gathered evidence of alien life on Mars that is as tantalising as it is inconclusive.
We thought we might have a definitive answer in 2003, when Britains £50 million Beagle 2 probe was scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet, carrying an instrument that could have detected traces of living things. But we never heard from the little probe again.
The loss was a massive disappointment to the professor behind the mission, Colin Pillinger of the Open University. During the late Nineties, I had seen him doggedly enlist support for the project from fellow space scientists, the government and even the likes of Blur and the artist Damien Hirst.
The European Space Agency promised Prof Pillinger that there would be a follow-up programme, with a mission as soon as 2007. That date slipped back again and again. The Mars mission is now scheduled for 2018, when a joint mission with Nasa is due to send two rovers to search for life. Towards the end of this year, Nasa will launch the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will set down a rover called Curiosity that will study whether conditions have ever been favourable for microbial life.
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