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Are you 2 BEAGLE on board?

The Beagle 2 Mars lander has had some unusual backers — among them British pop stars and artists. Declan Butler finds out how one researcher’s C. YOUNG/PA publicity drive got the Colin Pillinger (above) has boosted the profile of his Beagle 2 project by collaborating with figures project off the ground. such as artist Damien Hirst, whose dot painting (right) will calibrate the lander’s camera.

or a man with a reputation as a politi- It was originally claimed that the mission the technical and financial challenges they cal animal, Colin Pillinger’s appear- would cost about £25 million (US$41 million) faced is just incredible,” he adds. Fance might seem rather incongruous. — a snip for such an ambitious project, and But Beagle 2’s financing did not turn out The planetary scientist, based at the Open that sponsorship and advertising would quite as planned. Industrial companies gave University in Milton Keynes, UK, speaks in provide two-thirds of the cost. M&C Saatchi, help in kind, but the larger aerospace firms a rural drawl and opts for a leather jacket a London-based advertising firm, was signed worked for free only at the start of the project. and checked shirts rather than sharp suits. up to search for sponsors and even sell the M&C Saatchi has ended its involvement fol- Scarecrow straggly hair and muttonchop name of the mission. lowing the departure of Matthew Patten, head whiskers complete a look that might be said Media interest moved up a notch when of the company’s sponsorship arm and the to be more in keeping with his sideline in Blur, a successful British pop band, agreed to project’s internal champion. farming than with his role in publicizing a compose a nine-note tune that the lander The Beagle 2 team decline to discuss the multi-million-pound space mission. will beam back to Earth to signal its safe costs involved, saying that some sponsors But Pillinger’s image is deceptive. When arrival. Damien Hirst, an artist famous for wanted to remain anonymous. But Nature the Mars Express mission, under the auspices suspending animals in tanks of formalde- has learned that costs for the mission may of the European Space Agency (ESA), blasts hyde, provided a further publicity boost stand at around £40 million — about £15 off on 2 June, it will carry the Beagle 2 lander when he designed the painting that Beagle 2 million above original estimates. The short- — a device whose existence justifies Pillinger’s will use to calibrate its onboard camera. fall has been made up by the government and claim to be a “professor of PR”. If it hadn’t been The strategy paid off. In August 1999, the ESA, although two-thirds of the £17 million for Pillinger’s ability to generate publicity, and UK government agreed to plough £5 million contributed by ESA must be repaid by the his belief in his work, ESA’s mission could have into Beagle 2. About 20 companies, includ- British government. been going to Mars without a landing craft. ing the McLaren Formula One team, also Pillinger refused to discuss this and other The political manoeuvring behind Beagle offered to help. And after being impressed matters with Nature, citing a disagreement 2 dates back to 1997, when ESA decided to by Pillinger’s formal science proposal, the over some correspondence from him that develop a craft that would travel to Mars and PPARC pitched in £5 million. was published in the magazine in December study the planet from orbit. Like other ESA The resulting lander has attracted much 1996. Some of those who have worked with spacecraft, the agency planned to fund Mars acclaim. At 65 kilograms and 0.95 metres him say that he can be cantankerous. Accord- Express and its launch, whereas member across, the ratio of instruments to mass is ing to one astronomer, he can be “astonish- nations were to design and pay for the unprecedented, says Steven Squyres, an ingly tactless”, and is liable to call people who instruments it carried. astronomer at Cornell University in Ithaca, he thinks are wrong “bloody fools”. Pillinger, who was renowned for his stud- New York, and part of the team behind Yet space researchers are ultimately full of ies of martian meteorites, wanted to include NASA’s Mars rovers (see opposite page). admiration for Pillinger, and for the way in a lander that would search for evidence of “To put together a package that capable with which he has overcome a lack of initial inter- past or present life by analysing rock, soil and est in his Mars project. “Something like Beagle atmospheric samples. The plan had the 2 doesn’t happen without someone with backing of ESA, but the Particle Physics and o put together a the vision and drive to force it through,” says Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the package that Squyres. And Pillinger could yet find that the main UK funding body for such projects, T budget is no longer an issue. If the lander gave the idea a cool reception. Officials say capable with the finds evidence of life on Mars, sponsorship that Beagle 2’s budget was initially poorly deals should be much easier to strike in defined, and that the council’s space funding challenges they faced the future. I was already committed elsewhere. Declan Butler is Nature’s European correspondent. is just incredible. Steven Squyres But Pillinger knew what buttons to press. ± www.beagle2.com STOCKTREK/CORBIS MARS IMAGE:

476 © 2003 Nature Publishing Group NATURE | VOL 423 | 29 MAY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature