The mission with ambition that did reach Red Planet
Twenty years ago a rocket bound for Mars was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying with it the Beagle 2 lander, conceived by Kingswood-born Colin Pillinger. Terry Ransome, a key member of the project, looks back at how it all came toge
BELIEVE it or not, June 2 marks 20 years since a symbol of Bristol inspiration was launched into space to set off on a seven-month journey to the Red Planet – Mars.
Our story starts in 1997 when Kingswood-born Professor Colin Pillinger (by then working with the Open University in Milton Keynes) came “home” to Bristol and to the Filton offices of Matra Marconi Space Ltd, which had a few years earlier taken over the spacecraft business of British Aerospace.
Colin had big plans. He had seen an announcement that the European Space Agency was planning to send a spacecraft to orbit Mars, taking photographs and surveying the atmosphere and surface as it flew over.
The spacecraft would be named Mars Express – because in 2003 Mars and Earth would be at their closest for 60,000 years – and the journey would be one of the quickest possible.
Back in 1969, as a planetary research scientist at Bristol University, Colin had been given samples of Moon rock from the Apollo 11 first landing. Then in the 1980s he had studied a meteorite discovered in Antarctica and found to contain gases with the characteristics of the Martian atmosphere.
Had it been knocked off the planet, who knows how many millions of years ago?
So when he heard of the Mars Express mission, Colin reasoned that “if you really want to study Mars, you need to land on it – especially if you want to look for signs of life”.
He came to ask the engineers at Filton how to build a Mars Lander. What should it look like? How long will it take? How much will it cost? Can we be sure it will survive?
And an even more basic question – what shall we call it? Colin’s wife, Judith, provided the answer to that one – Beagle 2, after HMS Beagle that took Charles Darwin around the world in the 1830s to seek out creatures hitherto unknown to Europeans.
I was one of those Filton engineers. My role at the time was to provide planning and cost estimates for spacecraft assembly planning, testing and launch support.
Together with design teams, we gave Colin enough data to go to the Space Agency and persuade them that, yes, taking his lander to Mars was a good idea.
One of the first steps was to change Colin’s box-like concept into something “round” – a base and a lid – that might roll as it hit the surface of Mars, rather than something with sharp corners that might split open!
Solar panels and an “arm” with cameras, a microscope, a rock grinder and a sampling device (the “mole”) would all be safely stowed into the base unit.
By 1999 however, Matra Marconi had transferred much of the space business away from Bristol and some engineers moved with it to continue their work on Beagle 2.
Others set up their own consultancy businesses in Bristol and South Gloucestershire area, and they would provide software or hardware for Beagle 2.
I transferred to Stevenage to become assembly, test and launch site manager for Beagle 2.
This meant planning the individual testing of components and assemblies from over 30 different companies in the UK and more from overseas and then ensuring they were safely assembled into a Beagle 2 ready for flight by the planned launch window in early June 2003.
We had also, by international agreement, to ensure that the lander was “sterile and clean” – firstly so we did not contaminate Mars with any biological material and secondly so that Beagle 2 scientists did not detect life, only to then realise it was a human hair from Earth!
Before that though, Beagle 2’s design evolved as more scientific experiments were added. We also had to find a way for the lander to descend safely through the Martian atmosphere initially at high speed and high temperatures, while slowing down for a gentle landing.
The lander was encased in an “aeroshell”, within which were parachutes and a set of three airbags that would expand just before surface impact to cushion the impact onto the Mars surface.
By March 2003 all was ready. Everything had been tested extensively and everything thoroughly cleaned and sterilised and safely stowed inside the aeroshell.
A transport container was ready and off we went to Toulouse, France, where Mars Express was nearing completion.
Then after a quick “fit check” of Beagle 2 onto the spacecraft, we repacked and set off for the Russian launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
What an experience! To be at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from where Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, Yuri Gagarin lifted off in 1961 as the first human to go into space and countless other missions were launched to the Moon and planets and to orbit the Earth. And now we were headed for Mars!
We mounted Beagle 2 onto the spacecraft for the final time and then watched as Mars Express was installed into the Soyuz rocket nosecone – with our lander leading the way. Eventually we followed the launcher across the desert for a couple of kilometres to the launch pad.
The climax came, right on schedule, with “lift off ” at 11.45pm Kazakh time (5.45pm UK summer time) on June 2, 2003. Then we returned home – to wait.
The next milestone came on December 19, when we gathered in London to see live images sent back by Mars Express as Beagle 2 drifted into the distance – ejected on a collision course with Mars
It is very heartwarming to look up at Mars in the night sky and say Colin Pillinger’s Beagle 2 is up there, on that planet. We put it there for him Former Filton engineer Terry Ransome
(intentionally) before the spacecraft manoeuvred itself into an orbit around the planet.
And then on Christmas Day 2003, early in the morning, many of the team gathered at the Open University in London, alongside the media, to listen for the first transmission from Beagle 2 – a radio signal composed by two members of the band Blur – Alex James and Damon Albarn.
The lander should have reached the top of the atmosphere soon after midnight and then, within 7.7 minutes, a pilot parachute should have deployed, slowing the rate of descent before the main parachute took over and the aeroshell fell away.
The airbags would expand to soften surface impact, before opening to let the lander drop out. Finally the lander would open, solar panels unfold and the transmitter would “talk” to Earth. Once communication had been established a plate with colour spots, painted by Damien Hirst, would be used to calibrate the lander’s cameras and other equipment.
But – we heard nothing. And we neither heard nor saw anything until just over 11 years later, in January 2015. Had we given up hope?
Maybe, but when it was announced in one national newspaper that the “Beagle 2 has been found exactly where the scientists left it” the whole Beagle team was overjoyed.
But I did have to exclaim though that “it was the engineers who put it there, not the scientists!”
Well, we had not “heard” from it, just seen it. Beagle 2 had been photographed, by NASA’s new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with its latest high-resolution camera, on the surface of Mars and just 5km from the aiming point.
The images, on close examination, showed one, or maybe two, of the four solar panels had not unfolded, leaving the radio antenna covered and unable to communicate. Beagle was still silent.
But, to be sure, Beagle 2 DID safely land on the surface of Mars. It is still there in 2023, 20 years after launch, and will be there for almost “ever”.
It is very heart-warming to look up at Mars in the night sky and say Colin Pillinger’s Beagle 2 is up there, on that planet. We put it there for him.
Unfortunately Colin, who would have been 80 this May, never knew that Beagle 2 had landed – he passed away in May 2014, just months before the photographs were taken and his dream became a reality.
But his name lives on Mars, where, thanks to NASA, a section of the rim of the Endeavour crater is now identified as Pillinger Point.