Mars Express Beagle 2

Mission Profile

Mars Express Beagle 2 was a small British-built Mars lander carried aboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter, released on 19 December 2003 for an aeroshell-protected atmospheric entry and parachute-assisted landing on the Isidis Planitia basin on 25 December 2003. The lander was named after HMS Beagle, the ship on which Charles Darwin conducted his evolutionary research, reflecting its goal of searching for signs of past or present life using mass spectrometry, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and a stereo camera system. Contact with Beagle 2 was never established after landing, and it was declared lost. In January 2015, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the lander on the surface, revealing it had landed successfully but that two or three of its four solar panel petals had failed to fully open, blocking the radio antenna.