What is Beagle II?

What is Beagle II?

Colin Pillinger (Professor of Planetary Sciences) gives expert video advice on: How was Beagle born?; Why did you launch the Beagle mission?; What is Beagle II? and more...

To get it into the atmosphere, Beagle II had to be a probe. To land on the surface, Beagle II had to be a lander. To get it to Mars, Beagle II had to hitch a ride on another vehicle, and to get it on the way to Mars, it had to launch from Earth. It was every step we know about space travel: how to get off Earth, how to get someplace, hopefully, how to successfully land there, and when we got there, how to gather some data and send it back. It was a mission in those terms. The fact that we were part of somebody else's mission as a hitchhiker meant there were two missions; their mission and our mission, although we didn't see it like that, we saw it if as we were all in the same mission. We were part of the mission and they stood to gain information from us which would have helped them with their orbit. I mean, taking a picture from orbit, you've got some ground truth of what you're looking at, and you can say "I now know what we're looking at, and I can translate that into some places I haven't been." It all helps.