First Ever European Visit To Red Planet

The wind stirs the dust around the former Soviet Cosmodrome at Baikonur, in Kazakhstan. On the launch pad, a Russian-built Soyuz rocket, tipped by a probe called "Beagle II." If all goes according to plan, by December, the Beagle will have landed on the Martian surface and begun looking for signs of primitive life on the Red Planet.

An Interplanetary Mission At Bargain-Basement Prices

The European Mars mission is a study in economic space flight. The Beagle II cost about $73 million to develop and build. Management of the project has been largely turned over to private industry and academia. Instead of launching the probe from the European Space Agency's facility in South America aboard an Ariane rocket, mission leaders decided to go to Baikonur and use the less-expensive, more reliable Soyuz rocket. The launch will be number 1,677 for the Soyuz program.

Total price tag for the European mission: approximately $300 million.

Red Planet - Cursed Planet?

"Mars is bad luck for space and a real difficulty for us," ESA's science director David Southwood told Reuters. "If we were sailors, I think we would be very superstitious about going to Mars." Indeed, 20 of the past 30 missions to the Red Planet have ended in something less than success. But Southwood told Reuters that superstition won't impede the Mars Express project from putting Beagle II on the surface. "Maybe there was life on Mars once in the past? We are going to seek evidence of past life ... or indeed, even micro-organisms that are alive now," Southwood said.

The European probe won't be alone in its trek to the Red Planet, as Mars and Earth come closer than they've been for the past 66,000 years. There are two NASA orbiters circling the fourth planet and two more NASA landers are slated for launch later this month. The American landers contain rovers that are bigger and more sophisticated than the UK-developed Beagle II. But only Beagle has that onboard chemical laboratory specifically designed to look for prehistoric signs of life.

FMI: www.beagle2.com