Though Mars has long intrigued humans, especially those who dream of extraterrestrial life, it has repeatedly humbled anyone rich and venturesome enough to send metallic proxies across millions of miles of space to try to learn its secrets.
The US and Russia spent billions on a dozen or so robotic craft meant to land on the planet and radio back their findings. Only three succeeded -- two Viking probes in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder in 1997.
Now comes a bold new contender. Its goal is not only to do basic science but, for the first time in a quarter century, to look for concrete signs of extraterrestrial life, ancient or modern.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The disk-like craft is the Beagle II, built on a shoestring by Britain, in partnership with the European Space Agency, and named after the ship whose voyages fed Darwin's theorizing about evolution.
The British craft weighs just 31kg, about 5 percent of Viking's weight and 8 percent of Pathfinder's. Stripped of unessential gear and backup systems, it cannot send out a rover to explore the local terrain but must instead rely on a single robotic arm to probe the site.
"We didn't have any money, so we had to think harder," said Dr. Colin Pillinger, the project's lead scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The lander, though small, about a meter wide when folded for travel through space, is nonetheless loaded with sensors, cameras, test chambers, a microscope, a rock grinder and a sampling arm that in theory can dig down 1.5m into the Martian soil. Getting under the weathered surface is a high priority because the harsh atmosphere of the planet (which produces its rusty color) is judged likely to destroy any life.
Beagle II is to soar into space atop a Russian rocket in early June and land on Mars in late December.
If everything goes as planned, it will explore for six months and will vie for public attention with two American craft, identical rovers that are to land in January. All three robots are to arrive more or less simultaneously because the orbits of Mars and Earth are coming into unusually close alignment.
Know-how
Alternately skeptical and admiring, American experts call the British lander audacious. Its mission is extremely difficult, they say, and the lack of British know-how in the business of exploring Mars and making planetary probes raises the odds of failure.
"We have lots of experience in how difficult it is," said Dr. Bruce Murray, the former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is now at the California Institute of Technology. "The Beagle mission is taking on a very large challenge."
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has about 23,000 employees. Britain has no similar agency. So making Beagle involved enlisting universities, trusts, syndicates,firms, and even the British National Lottery, which is helping to finance the lander's mission control center.
Mars has long been considered not only difficult to explore but alluring, given its reputation as the most likely spot in the solar system to harbor extraterrestrials. Recent hints of running water, modern volcanism and a molten core have only increased its appeal, suggesting that Mars may be able to support life.
Beagle II's developers say their relative poverty and inexperience have worked in their favor, helping them solve old problems in new ways. On the other hand, they add, whenever possible they have learned from their predecessors. For instance, Beagle II has a system of parachutes and air bags developed for landing in rough terrain, adapted from the Pathfinder system.
"We're not ignoring past experience by any means," said Dr. Alan Wells, director of the space research center at the University of Leicester, which is in charge of mission control for Beagle II.
The British hope that the small craft will find not just fossils but live Martians dwelling in rocks and soil.
In the past decade or so, deep inside Earth, scientists have discovered a rich microbial fauna and have theorized that Mars may be similar. Its interior, after all, is thought to be wet and warm, potentially a microbe heaven. The idea took wings in 1996 when NASA announced that a Martian meteorite carried what appeared to be microscopic fossils. The claim has been subject to heated debate ever since.
Scientists agree that the discovery of even a single extraterrestrial microbe would be historic, illuminating how life began and the odds of its arising elsewhere in the universe.
NASA's Viking spacecraft, the only previous lander to probe for signs of life, found none in soil samples. Scientists now suspect that the harsh atmosphere made the soil sterile.
Scientists at the Open University, where Pillinger directs the Planetary Sciences Research Institute, have long searched meteorites known to have originated on Mars for the building blocks of life.
The institute's laboratories are considered some of the world's best for studying extraterrestrial samples for signs of carbon, considered an ideal basis for life because of its easy bonding with other atoms.
The British lander project had its origins in 1997 when the European Space Agency announced an orbiter mission called Mars Express, Europe's first effort to explore the planet. Pillinger lobbied hard to add a lander. Money was scarce. But he, the Open University and its partners received approval to proceed, even though they had to raise much of the money themselves.
All Aboard the Beagle
In an interview, Pillinger declined to disclose the lander's benefactors and total cost, estimated publicly at about US$60 million -- a pittance by industry standards. Each of the new NASA rovers cost US$400 million, including launching and operations.
Beagle II's main contractor is Astrium, a European conglomerate with much experience in satellites but none in planetary probes. Because of Beagle's small size, weight and budget, the company was forced to innovate.
"We rewrote rules," said Jim Clemmet of Astrium, Beagle's chief engineer. For instance, the designers threw out the metallic boxes on spacecraft that usually shield circuit boards. "We said, `Why?"' he recalled. "So there are no boxes, just boards. It saved grams but it adds up."
Last year, the struggle to trim weight produced a crisis. The parachute meant to lower Beagle to the Martian surface proved so slight that the spacecraft came in too fast. In field tests, its air bags, meant to cushion the fall, exploded at touchdown.
By October, a new parachute was ready. Its weight was the same. But its larger size cut the craft's landing speed to 40 miles per hour from 75, Pillinger recalled. It produced no more explosions.
During the coming mission, Beagle II is to spin away from Mars Express, the mother ship, five days before it begins orbiting the planet's poles. The lander, after speeding through the Martian atmosphere, is to parachute down low and bounce to a halt in Isidis Planitia, a large flat region just north of the equator that appears to be a sedimentary basin that may preserve traces of past water and life.
Beagle II resembles a pocket watch. Upon opening, its lid will set out four large solar-power panels to charge its battery. The bottom half of the spacecraft holds most of the gear and will deploy a robot arm bristling with tools and sensors.
Stereo cameras atop the arm are to take panoramic photos of the landing site, helping investigators on Earth decide where to cut, dig and explore. The arm will then reach out to a rock judged suitable and use a grinder to chip away its weathered surface, removing the kind of powdery veil that British scientists say hampered the investigations of Mars Pathfinder.
Beagle's arm has many ways to probe a freshly opened rock. With the microscope, it can zoom in on features as small as bacteria and watch for movement.
More broadly, it can use a Mossbauer spectrometer to shower exposed rock with gamma rays and measure rebounding ones, telling of mineral composition. Also, an X-ray spectrometer can bombard the cut and measure emitted rays, revealing the elements present.
Such tests can help distinguish the origin of rocks, whether, say, they are volcanic or sedimentary and whether they contain carbon.
Finally, after a suitable rock is chosen, a tool on the arm's end can drill down 4mm and sample the rocky powder.
The main experiments to detect life are nestled inside Beagle II's main body. There, the arm will place the rock sample into a gas analyzer, which has 12 ovens. Any carbon dioxide driven off by the heat will go into a mass spectrometer, which can measure the ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 13.
On Earth, all living things favor the lighter isotope of carbon, carbon 12, over the heavier carbon 13. The hope is that any Martians, dead or alive, will exhibit the same isotope favoritism, and that Beagle will be able to zero in on this signature of life.
"It would be strong evidence but not proof," said Dr. Heinrich Holland, a Harvard geochemist. "It would be very intriguing. Everybody's going to be very interested to see if they find anything."
Another way Beagle II can gather specimens for isotope testing is with its tethered sampler, known as the mole. It, too, is deployed from the top of the robot arm, which can direct the device to dig horizontally (under a boulder, for instance, where any life will be well shielded from the harsh atmosphere) or vertically into the soil.
A spring, repeatedly compressed, moves the mole forward. After a special cavity in its tip fills with soil, a winch on the arm reels in the tether to retrieve the sample.
Dr. Lutz Richter of the Institute of Space Simulation, in Cologne, Germany, which developed the mole, said it would dig progressively deeper. The first soil sample may come from five inches down, the next a meter down, and the last five feet down.
Bogs and paddies
Beagle II will also look for life by sniffing Mars' atmosphere. On Earth, many bacteria associated with peat bogs, rice paddies and ruminant animals produce methane as a metabolic byproduct. On Mars, scientists say, methane will have a very short lifetime because of the destructive atmosphere.
So its detection will indicate a source that is continually replenished. Inside Beagle II, the mass spectrometer, which can identify compounds by measuring how far magnetic fields deflect their masses, will examine the Martian atmosphere for methane. It consists of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms, giving it a fairly unique signature.
The British lander's methods of looking for life are quite different from those of Viking, which were more direct but nonetheless proved to be frustratingly ambiguous.
For instance, a Viking experiment added water and nutrients to Martian soil. If the soil held micro-organisms, the thinking went, they would consume the nutrients and emit gases. The test quickly produced oxygen. But most analysts concluded that the results were best explained by oxidants in the moistened soil, not life.
"Viking didn't succeed, so we're trying a different technique," said Pillinger, Beagle II's lead scientist. "We'll decide if it's better when we get the results. It's more universal. It detects all atoms of carbon in all their forms."
The absence of evidence, Pillinger said, quoting an adage, is not evidence of absence. So if Beagle II fails to find life, that in no way will mean that the planet is uninhabited.
"We'd want to keep trying," Pillinger said. "No scientist is going to tell you it's the end of the line."
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