All Rights Reserved Beagle 2A MARS-BOUND space probe built with the help of a Wiltshire organisation begins the last stage of its 250-million mile voyage on Friday.
The Beagle 2 lander will separate from the Mars Express orbiting mother craft and begin its final journey to the surface of Mars.
On Friday morning at 10.31am experts involved in the project will receive an update from Mars Express via a direct audiovisual link to confirm the separation manoeuvre has been successful.
British scientists, funded by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) based in North Star, Swindon, built Beagle 2 to look for signs of life, either past or present, on the inhospitable planet.
The craft took off from the Baikonor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan shortly after 6.45pm on June 2.
Its launch vehicle was the same rocket used to launch cosmonauts and astronauts aboard Soyuz spacecraft.
PPARC, which funds a range of advanced scientific projects, put about £5.5bn into the project, which is being run by the European Space Agency.
PPARC chief executive Prof Ian Halliday, said: "Mars has always fascinated us.
"The world has continually postulated on the red planet harbouring life and this mission, in which the UK has played a significant role, will answer this age-old question.
"A positive result would be the vital first step in answering an even more fundamental question: are we alone in the universe?"
The lander weighs just 33.2kg, but has been described by the scientists who built it as a fully-equipped miniature chemical processing lab.
Simulation of Beagle 2 landing. All Rights Reserved Beagle 2Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, radio signals take about 40 minutes to reach the craft. Most of its operations are therefore automated.
While Mars Express analyses the red planet from orbit, the lander will perform experiments to determine whether the environment on the surface could harbour or could ever have harboured life.
PPARC spokesman Peter Barratt said: "In a nutshell, the probe will search for the signatures of life.
"The lander contains a suite of sensors which will analyse the environment and the atmosphere."
Features include a probe called the Mole which will travel some distance away, extract soil samples and return them to the lander for analysis.
In addition, it has a drilling device which can extract samples from within rocks for analysis.
The current mission is the latest stage of the human race's fascination with its planetary neigh- bour.
The development of modern rockets and space technology meant curiosity could begin to be satisfied.
Contact began with flybys in the early 1960s and slowly progressed until the unmanned Viking landings of 1976 and those of subsequent probes.
Emma-Kate Lidbury
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