New Boost in Hunt for Life on Mars

23 May 2002

The Wellcome Trust biomedical research charity has agreed to help finance a vital piece of equipment on board Beagle 2 which will be looking for traces of life on Mars - and could lead to the development of new medical equipment.

The mission to the red planet, which has been masterminded by a team of scientists based at the Open University in Milton Keynes, will be launched in a year's time (May 23 2003) from Kazakhstan.

Beagle 2 will land on Mars around Christmas and during the ensuing weeks will hopefully collect enough evidence to indicate if life has ever existed there.

The Wellcome Trust is providing £2.6m to pay for the construction of a miniaturised version of a mass spectrometer and 12-oven, 31-valve gas analysis package. This highly sophisticated "cooking kit" identifies atoms and isotopes and will determine the chemical composition of samples.

If the resulting information reveals that the element carbon has undergone biological processing this could point to some form of life once having been on Mars. The package can also detect trace gases in the atmosphere which are the tell-tale signs of current life. The funds will allow the team to explore possible medical uses and develop versions of the instrumentation for clinical applications.

Professor Colin Pillinger, head of the Planetary and Science Research Institute at the Open University, said : "One of the biggest challenges of Beagle 2 has been to compress all the paraphernalia which normally fills half a room and make it fit inside the lander.

"We've had to reduce the whole package including the mass spectrometer to something weighing around five kilos which is a bit like reducing your family saloon to a glove compartment. But while developing the idea we began to realise all the possible applications which might exist especially in medical areas where instruments need to be small, portable, robust and sterile.

"We began to think about the "personal" mass spectrometer, a sort of mobile phone for analysts and we are delighted that the Wellcome Trust has had the vision to back this concept."

Dr. Michael Dexter, Director of Wellcome Trust said : " There could well be some medical spin-offs from the miniaturisation of the mass spectrometer that will be extremely useful, if it allows the technology to move from the lab into a range of clinical settings."

"But if biology is not unique to our planet, what we might learn from life that has arisen elsewhere could challenge some of our most basic assumptions. The finding of life beyond our stratosphere would be as spectacular and thought-provoking as Darwin's theory of evolution, which resulted from the exploits of the original Beagle.

"This is beyond blue skies research and with such a voyage of discovery many novel ideas are bound to emerge."

Notes to Editors :
1.

• The Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity, established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936. It is funded from a private endowment, which is managed with long-term stability and growth in mind.

• The Trust's mission is to promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health.

2. Beagle 2 will be launched in May 2003 as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express Mission. As Mars Express approaches Mars at the end of 2003, Beagle 2 will be ejected from the orbiter and land on the surface of the planet. The instrument package on board Beagle 2 will analyse samples of martian rock, soil and atmosphere to seek for signs or past or present life on the planet.

3. Beagle 2 is named in honour of HMS Beagle, the ship, captained by Robert FitzRoy, which took Charles Darwin around the world in the 1830s and led to his writing "On the Origin of Species"

4. For further information about Beagle 2 contact

Barry Gardner,
Wellcome Trust Press Office.
Tel: +44 (0)207 611 7329.
Email: b.gardner@wellcome.ac.uk
Web: www.wellcome.ac.uk

Professor Colin Pillinger FRS
Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute
The Open University
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1908 652119 / 655169
Fax: +44 (0) 1908 655910
Email: psrg@open.ac.uk
Web: www.beagle2.com