The British-designed and built Beagle 2 spacecraft was launched successfully from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on 2 June 2003, together with ESA's Mars Express orbiter.Two NASA rovers and one Japanese orbiter are also currently on course for the red planet. Beagle 2 is intended to land around 24 December 2003 in Isidis Planitia, Mars.
Its upcoming mission has prompted the following comments from associates of Space Age (in alphabetical order of surname).
"Exploring the unknown lifts us out of our mundane lives and gives us the chance to wonder at new discoveries, to believe in the future and to grow. We need to send Beagle and its successors to Mars in order to maintain our culture of optimism and progress."
– Stephen Ashworth, Oxford, U.K.
"As an artist, I am very sorry that the Pillingers chose to prevent, by the application of stringent copyright rules, any artist outside their employ from portraying any aspect of the Beagle 2 mission. Surely it would be in their interest for any depictions of their project to appear, as publicity, promotion and general public interest?
It is also rather sad that they chose to use the work of Damien Hirst as the first 'art' by a living Earth artist to be placed on the soil of Mars. He admits to being somewhat bemused and puzzled by the whole idea, and while I can see that his 'name' is probably valuable from the publicity angle, there are many genuine space artists who are more worthy of this honour!
Even so, I wish this mission all success, and hope that it does indeed supply evidence for life . . ."
– David A Hardy, Birmingham, U.K.
"1. We are now learning increasingly more about the various threats to our home planet. These are varied but a couple that are becoming better known to the general public are the impact of an asteroid/comet or the eruption of a super volcano. Both of these are capable of not only "knocking us back to the Stone Age" but, if catastrophic enough, polishing life on Earth off altogether. It is a very old cliche but currently we have all our eggs in one basket..........
2. We desperately need to know more about our planet, how it came to be, the changes that have ocurred over the time since its birth, its weather systems, geology, ecology and many other things. But knowing just our planet alone is not enough – to make sense of our findings we need to be able to make comparisons with the other planets in our Solar System – and Mars is an excellent candidate. To learn enough of Mars, its past and its climate and structure, robots are not yet as competent as scientists and explorers walking on the planet's surface.
3. It is a truism that many major technological advances have been driven by war. The exploration of the Solar System, starting with Mars, would be a major collaborative project for all of humankind, "the moral equivalent of war". The benefits of discoveries made would be for everyone, and human beings would learn how to cooperate in an enterprise that is life-enriching and not life-destroying.
4. On an entirely different, and some would say highly speculative, level, and on a much grander scale, is the idea that life expands to fill all available ecological niches – from the sea to the land – therefore the next step should be the nearest suitable real estate, Mars. This is a natural part of evolution – but a technically aided evolution that will eventually fill a galaxy."
– Ross Sargent
"There are two important reasons for a large scale space program:
1 – Civilizations supply a high standard of living with plenty of spare productive capacity. That means either unemployment or public works – such as space travel. This is true dating to Egypt's Pyramids.
2 – We have a responsibility that life and intelligent life in particular survives and prospers. We need populations off the Earth in the event of any major catastrophe here. The Moon should be first, Mars second."
– Jim Trounson, Ontario, California, U.S.A.
"It seems like, we're on the edge of an economic depression, very likely, a Great Depression – maybe the "Greatest" ever.
Given the likelihood of war in against the Moslem culture, a Dark Age.
We should start now, making the preparations, to start lobbying for a great "public works" project, to re-employ the People – building the interplanetary automotive construction docks necessary, to sustain the earth through natural disasters.
I'm not saying that we should panic, and start spending money, at-least not much, but the opportunity must not be allowed to catch us unaware, and pass us by, for lack of foresight."
– "Ken"
This page created 9 March 2003 / 34th Apollo Anniversary Year