Almost two hundred years after Charles Darwin set sail on His Majesty's ship the Beagle on a voyage that revolutionized the way people look at the Earth. Beagle 2 will take off to search for life elsewhere in the universe.
Almost two hundred years after Charles Darwin set sail on His Majesty's ship the Beagle on a voyage that revolutionized the way people look at the Earth. Beagle 2 will take off to search for life elsewhere in the universe.
If we can find any evidence of life - in whatever form - in space, that would be wonderful. It will finally prove that we are not alone," said Beagle-2 Chief Scientist Colin Pillinger."
Randall Keynes, Darwin's great-great-grandson and coincidentally also a relative of the economist Michael Keynes was thrilled. "Darwin must have been very excited to hear about Beagle 2," Keynes said at the opening of an exhibition at the British National Maritime Museum on the voyages of the Beagle. "The basic question asked in both Beagle expeditions is how life began. Darwin caused a revolution in religions with the theory of evolution about natural selection. If we find life on another planet, it is important what it will do," he said.
The saucer-shaped spacecraft, entirely of British development, will lift off from the Baikonur spaceport in June 2003 and plummet to Mars seven months later.
"Mankind has been fascinated by Mars for 5,000 years - and in this case also the planet that is the easiest to reach," said Pillinger. The scientific team developed a special parachute that would slow the fall of the spacecraft weighing about 30 kilograms from a speed of 130 km/h to a speed at which it could survive - about 60 km/h
When the spacecraft lands, a laboratory the size of an umbrella will open out of it, and out of it will break a mechanical arm with searchers, spectrometers and cameras, as well as an array of solar cells to supply them with electricity. About a third of the spacecraft's weight is dedicated to pure science and mostly to a spectrometer that will be used to measure the mass and chemical composition of the surface. "We calculate the activity according to an operational lifetime of 180 days, if we're lucky, before the solar collectors are covered in dust, Pillinger said. According to him, the temperature drops every night to minus seventy degrees Celsius. "We will look for water and minerals that could provide us with evidence if they were on Planet of flowing water and organic matter. If we can show that life evolved there, it will answer the biggest question facing humanity," he said.
Keynes says that despite the 172 years separating the two beagles, his grandfather would have known and appreciated the initiative. Navigation was also important to Darwin in the local Beagle and is also essential to Beagle 2, he added. "Darwin also asked big questions about life, as Beagle 2 is doing now."
