English planetary scientist Colin Pillinger dies aged 70

English planetary scientist Colin Pillinger, best known for his 2003 attempt to land a spacecraft on Mars, has died aged 70, his family have said.

Prof Pillinger was at his home in Cambridge when he suffered a brain haemorrhage and fell into a deep coma.

His family said he later died at Addenbrooke's Hospital, England, without regaining consciousness.

His death was "devastating and unbelievably sad", they said in a statement.

'Unfinished business'
The space scientist built a probe to search for Martian life, naming it Beagle 2 after Charles Darwin's HMS Beagle.

It was the first time an individual researcher had sent their own vessel into space.

The spacecraft vanished without trace but Prof Pillinger carried on pushing space agencies to complete what he called "unfinished business on Mars".

Fans took to Twitter to pay tribute to the scientist, with author Keith Mansfield calling him a "great advocate" for space and Mars.

Phil Ford, a writer on Dr Who, said: "Very sad to see Prof Colin Pillinger has died. A proper British boffin who will be fondly remembered for the Beagle Mars mission."

At the age of 62 Prof Pillinger was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which left him finding it difficult to walk.

He said the illness would not diminish his efforts to land a British craft on Mars.

A professor in interplanetary science at the Open University, he headed the university's Department of Physical Sciences until 2005.

He was awarded a CBE in 2003 and had asteroid 15614 named after him a year later, 2004.

"A piece of Professor Pillinger now moves between Mars and Jupiter," a Nasa scientist said at the time.

Prof Pillinger was married to Judith with whom he had two children, Shusanah and Nicolas.

NASA Mars Exploration: Seeking Public Opinion!

NASA is giving you a platform in the form of the NASA Mars Forum that is currently calling for participants. Throughout June you can pose questions related to the re-planning of the Mars Exploration Program.

With the reduced 2013 US budget for space exploration, NASA was forced to withdraw from two missions planned together with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Further revision of the Mars Exploration Program (MEP) is also needed to accommodate new developments in science, human space flight, and technology.

Last week, a Mars exploration workshop was held in Houston, Texas with all the outputs now available at the Mars Exploration Concepts and Approaches website.

Various challenges, approaches, and strategies are presented here for the website visitors to get inspired and contribute to the forum with their opinions and ideas.


The activity should result in selecting the highest pay-off mission architecture with the first launch opportunity in 2018. The strategy will take into account the challenge of sending humans to orbit Mars in the 2030s.

The experimental forum will be active until July 1, 2012. NASA hopes the forum will provide them with a better understanding of public interest and specific areas on which to focus attention.

NASA Mars Spirit Lander and Bonneville Crater in Colour

Near the lower left corner of this view is the three-petal lander platform that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit drove off in January 2004.

The lander is still bright, but with a reddish colour, probably due to accumulation of Martian dust.

› See labeled version

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this view on Jan. 29, 2012, providing the first image from orbit to show Spirit's lander platform in colour.

The view covers an area about 2,000 feet (about 600 meters) wide, dominated by Bonneveille Crater. North is up. A bright spot on the northern edge of Bonneville Crater is a remnant of Spirit's heat shield.

Spirit spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles east of its landing site.

An image of the lander platform taken by Spirit's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) after the rover had driven off is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05117.

The bright heat shield remnant can be seen in a panorama the same camera took of Bonneville Crater, at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA05591.jpg .

This image is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_025815_1655. Other products from the same observation can be found at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_025815_1655 .

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

NASA: Viking Lander Model

NASA's Viking Project found a place in history when it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft successfully on the surface of Mars.

Two identical spacecraft, each consisting of a lander and an orbiter, were built.

Each orbiter-lander pair flew together and entered Mars orbit; the landers then separated and descended to the planet's surface.

Viking 2 launched 36 years ago today on Sept. 9, 1975. This artist's concept depicts a Viking lander on the surface of Mars.

The Viking 2 lander settled down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3, 1976, while the Viking 1 Lander touched down on the western slope of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold) on July 20, 1976.

Besides taking photographs and collecting other science data on the Red Planet's surface, the two landers conducted three biology experiments designed to look for possible signs of life.

These experiments discovered unexpected and enigmatic chemical activity in the Martian soil, but provided no clear evidence for the presence of living microorganisms in soil near the landing sites. According to scientists, Mars is self-sterilising.

They believe the combination of solar ultraviolet radiation that saturates the surface, the extreme dryness of the soil and the oxidizing nature of the soil chemistry prevent the formation of living organisms in the Martian soil.

Although the Viking mission was planned to continue for 90 days after landing, each orbiter and lander operated far beyond its design lifetime. Viking Orbiter 1 functioned until July 25, 1978, while Viking Orbiter 2 continued for four years and 1,489 orbits of Mars, concluding its mission Aug. 7, 1980.

Because of the variations in available sunlight, both landers were powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators -- devices that create electricity from heat given off by the natural decay of plutonium.

That power source allowed long-term science investigations that otherwise would not have been possible. The last data from Viking Lander 2 arrived at Earth on April 11, 1980. Viking Lander 1 made its final transmission to Earth Nov. 11, 1982.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

NASA Thruster Test Aids Future Robotic Lander's Ability to Land Safely

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., collaborated with NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, N.M., and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, Calif., to successfully complete a series of thruster tests at the White Sands test facility.

The test will aid in maneuvering and landing the next generation of robotic lunar landers that could be used to explore the moon's surface and other airless celestial bodies.

The Robotic Lunar Lander Development Project at the Marshall Center performed a series of hot-fire tests on two high thrust-to-weight thrusters – a 100-pound-class for lunar descent and a 5-pound-class for attitude control.

The team used a lunar mission profile during the test of the miniaturized thrusters to assess the capability of these thruster technologies for possible use on future NASA spacecraft.

The test program fully accomplished its objectives, including evaluation of combustion stability, engine efficiency, and the ability of the thruster to perform the mission profile and a long-duration, steady-state burn at full power. The test results will allow the Robotic Lander Project to move forward with robotic lander designs using advanced propulsion technology.

The test articles are part of the Divert Attitude Control System, or DACS, developed by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency of the Department of Defense. The control system provides two kinds of propulsion -- one for control and the other for maneuvering.

The Attitude Control System thrusters provide roll, pitch and yaw control. These small thruster types were chosen to meet the golf-cart-size lander's requirement for light-weight, compact propulsion components to aid in reducing overall spacecraft mass and mission cost by leveraging an existing government resource.

Russia to test Mars lander for 2011 flight

Russian scientists say they're preparing to test an unmanned lander for a 2011 mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.

The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft will land on the surface of Phobos, take soil samples and return them to Earth, RIA Novosti reported Friday.

"The aim of the test is to narrow down the lander's projected impact location on the surface of the Earth," a statement by Russia's Central Aerodynamic Institute said.

"As far as the lander ... does not include any signaling equipment ... narrowing down its projected impact area will make the search for it easier," the statement said.

The project was conceived in 1999, and in June 2006 the Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin started manufacturing and testing the development
version of the spacecraft's on-board equipment.

The mission is expected to begin in November 2011 and last some 330 days, RIA Novosti said.

NASA Mars: Try to Revive Frozen Phoenix Lander

Next week, NASA will begin attempts to revive the frozen Phoenix Mars Lander, which has been coated in ice in the Martian arctic for more than a year, to see if it can live up to its name and rise from the ashes.

The solar-powered spacecraft landed in the northern reaches of Mars on May 25, 2008, and spent five months digging up the Martian dirt looking for water ice, which it found just below the rusty red surface. The finding has implications for the possible past existence of life on Mars.

Beginning Jan. 18, NASA's Mars orbiter Odyssey will listen for possible, though improbable, radio transmissions from Phoenix. Mission managers aren't optimistic on the lander's chances.

"We do not expect Phoenix to have survived, and therefore do not expect to hear from it. However, if Phoenix is transmitting, Odyssey will hear it," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will perform a sufficient number of Odyssey contact attempts that if we don't detect a transmission from Phoenix, we can have a high degree of confidence that the lander is not active."

Phoenix lasted two months longer than its original planned three-month mission, finally succumbing to the increasingly cold temperatures and coatings of ice in November 2008, when mission managers lost contact.