Beating the Martian odds

By David Shukman BBC science correspondent in Baikonur

If you are superstitious, the Russian space launch centre of Baikonur might not be the best place to be right now.

Ready and waiting: Mars Express and Beagle sit atop their Soyuz launcher

Around midnight, vast sheets of lightning flashed on the horizon and the wind picked up, that unstoppable force sweeping across the barren steppe of central Asia.

Was someone telling us something? So many missions to Mars have crashed or vanished that many a conspiracy theory suggests the Red Planet can cast an evil spell on those who venture there.

So was this doom-laden weather carrying some kind of message?

The straight-faced scientific types of the European Space Agency (Esa) dismiss all this. And looking at the Mars Express poised on the launch pad under the harsh glare of floodlights there is a strong impression of real sturdiness.

The Russian Soyuz rocket is buttressed by boosters; they look like reinforcements.

Pravda paper

The white capsule on top seems safely to hold its precious cargo of the twin spacecraft: the Mars Express orbiter and the Beagle 2 lander.

This is a no-nonsense sort of place. The Esa people seem genuinely impressed that when the Russian engineers say they'll launch - they do launch.

The main orbiter and lander have been packed inside their fairing

"None of that political pressure that Nasa suffers from," they say.

Certainly, there's no time or energy wasted keeping the place tidy.

Any old piece of launch pad or gantry is left lying around. Pale tufts of grass push their way through the rusty rail tracks.

The gates guarding the Mars Express launch site seem loose on their hinges. In the toilets of the commander's office building, the only paper on offer is torn from copies of Pravda.

Stuck in the dust

This is the aftermath of a former space superpower and it's hard to imagine that Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin once made space history here.

Incidentally, many of us in the media visiting Baikonur for the launch have been puzzling over our own superstitions. Were we suffering from our own Mars jinx?

Our flight from Moscow was delayed by six hours and the coach taking us from the launch centre to the hotel suddenly stopped when the driver realised his colleague driving another coach seemed to have got lost in the dark behind us.

Our driver then tried to turn around on the dusty track and got stuck.

For a while, we were paralysed in the wastes of Kazakhstan. And that was when the lightning picked up.