The man who saw red: the Open University's professor of planetary sciences has ted a project to engineer a unique probe that will attempt to prove once and for all it there is, or was, life on Mars. (Profile: Colin Pillinger).

Engineer, The, May, 2003

THE UK HAS never had a space programme. It has a long track record of designing and building systems for others, but so far has never run a mission on its own. In two weeks' time, however, this could all change when the Beagle 2 lander is due to be launched on a mission to establish whether there is, or ever was, life on Mars.

Beagle 2, named after the vessel on which Charles Darwin made his voyage of discovery, is no grand government initiative, though. While it will hitch a lift on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission and will rely on US probes to relay information hack to Earth, the project Would never have come to fruition were it not for the determination of Colin Pillinger, professor of planetary sciences at the Open University.

He devised...