COX WON’T BE COAXED TO MARS

PROFESSOR Brian Cox has fulfilled a boyhood dream by going behind the scenes at NASA for next Friday’s BBC2 documentary Seven Days On Mars — but count him out of a trip to the Red Planet.

‘I definitely wouldn’t go, even if I were asked,’ says Brian, who follows the progress of NASA’s Perseverance rover across the surface of the planet in the 90-minute special. ‘Such a trip is just about feasible now but will be the most difficult expedition in human history, with a requirement to be in space for between 18 months and two years. Not for me!’

Cox wrote to NASA in 1980, when he was 12, requesting pictures from their Voyager and Viking missions, which inspired him to become a physicist.