Mission to Mars

Professor Pillinger is confident that life exists on Mars

In a Hardtalk interview on May 29, Mike Embley talks to Professor Colin Pillinger, Beagle 2 project leader, about his quest to find life on Mars.

Click here to watch the full interview

Beagle 2 is a British-led mission to Mars to look for life. It is due to launch from Kazakhstan on Monday June 2.

If the launch goes ahead as planned, Beagle 2 project leader and university professor Colin Pillinger says it will land on Mars on Christmas morning.

"People have been dreaming about going to Mars for 5,000 years and academics are no exception."

We're going to Mars because it is there, because everyone else has wanted to go in the past and we're going to be the generation that does it

Colin Pillinger

Professor Pillinger says in 2003 Mars comes closer to Earth than it has been in the last 70,000 years.

"So to use a phrase that someone else has coined already, we're going to Mars because it is there, because everyone else has wanted to go in the past and we're going to be the generation that does it," he says.

Barren desert

Beagle 2, which weighs only 65kg, will collect samples from Mars.

Then a mass spectrometer will analyse the samples and try and answer 3 questions: does Mars have water, carbonates and organic matter?

"If you look at Mars now, it looks like a barren desert. But there's an accumulative store of evidence that suggests Mars wasn't always like that. Its surface appears to have been fashioned by torrents of water. Water is the essential ingredient of life."

Professor Pillinger says Mars is the most likely place in our Solar System where life could have developed in the past and could still be going on.

HARDtalk can be seen on BBC World at 0330gmt, 0830gmt, 1530gmt, 1830gmt and 2330gmt.

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