Leicester, we have a problem The frenzied efforts by Beagle 2's control centre to detect its faint electronic bark from the surface of Mars have so far failed, but why? ROBERT MATTHEWS investigates the mishaps that have dogged a project put together with too little time and too little money

From: The Sunday Telegraph London | Date: December 28, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

No one said it was going to be easy - least of all Professor Colin Pillinger. As the driving-force behind Beagle 2, Britain's first mission to Mars, he always knew that achieving his goal was the equivalent of scoring a hole-in-one from a distance of 150 miles.

Yet despite all the odds, in the early hours of Christmas Day, he and his team pulled off the shot. There is little doubt that just before 3am, Beagle 2 came down on the surface of the Red Planet, in a broad basin close to the Martian equator known as Isidis Planitia.

In any other circumstances, this would have been hailed as an ...

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