Went to a very entertaining lecture tonight given by Colin Pillinger of the planetary and space sciences research institute, at the Royal Society, on the topic of the Beagle 2 mission to Mars.

The Beagle 2 mission, which included a mass spectrometer inside the lander, that was hitchhiking aboard the Mars Express spacecraft. As you are probably aware, no contact has been made with the Beagle 2 since it left the Mars Express around Christmas 2003. The Beagle 2 had no means of communication between leaving Mars Express and the craft completing its landing sequence on the surface. This is due to the extra weight this would have added to the craft, which means the log of actual events now lies with image recognition on images taken as Beagle 2 left Mars Express, spy images from the various Martian survey satellites, combined with new Martian data provided from all the other instruments about the atmosphere and conditions.

The main lessons from this mission seem to be

• reduce the number of sequential events in any landing, as no matter how small the risk of failure in each event (bouncing, rolling, blowing incendiary devices etc), the combined probabilities of failure in a chain of events is really too great.
• together with better placement of the communications antenna [word doc] (provided by Qinetiq) in the next mission. In Beagle 2 the antenna was built from the existing structure of the space lander, to make it of zero mass, and therefore almost the last thing to happen was the enablement of the communications, much better would be to bring the communication antenna outside of the box, thus enabling each link in the chain of events to be controlled from external decisions.

This lecture really was a flag waving event for the European Space Agency (ESA), but moreover for British Space Science. Colin managed to claw his way aboard the Mars Express, with a mission that most funding sources seemed to be reluctant to join until it was a sure thing. It seems that the greatest battle we face in Space Exploration today is not with the physics and logistics of getting out there and doing it, but with the marketing, politics, sponsorships and bean counting that seems to be prevalent in today's introspective societies.

I guess Colin's gift has been to realise there is a human story in a robotic mission to Mars. The human story, quite rightly, is with the scientists, from inception, through fund-raising, and into the weeks of the mission itself. I think Colin showed that the mission had more viewers than 'Only Fools and Horses', which is quite an achievement, and shows that future missions may be able to leverage this vast audience. The British Space programme isn't setup for individual donations, but surely advertisers and other businesses will see that no matter what the outcome of future missions, it will be worth investing in immediately as the sizeable audience will be guaranteed.

The next mission window seems to be a 2007 launch (EVD), aboard the ESA mission to Mars, part of the Aurora programme. But the funding would have to be given early, as work would have to be seriously underway by the end of this year. And as Beagle 2 has proved it is possible to get great science into a minuscule lander, the 2007 mission will possibly have two or more landers on board, and hopefully this time the ESA can give a little bit more priority to the landers.

Let's hope in three years we can hear the immortal words 'The Beagles have Landed' coming from the bowels of Jodrell Bank.

Thanks to Colin and the Royal Society for another interesting evening.