EUROPE'S first mission to another planet will blast off on June 2 - with the specialist help of a Swindon organisation.

The Government's North Star-based Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council has made an extensive contribution to the Beagle 2 project.

It has provided part of the funding for the £110 million programme, as well as some of the technical know-how for experiments carried on the mission.

The research council also funds the UK's contribution to the European Space Agency.

Last month, the Beagle was attached to the Mars Express spacecraft by technicians in France.

The satellite will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Russian Soyuz rocket. It will take seven months to travel the 250 million miles to Mars, and if all goes to plan the Beagle 2 probe should land on the Martian surface at 2.54am on Christmas Day, leaving the Mars Express in orbit. It will enter the Martian atmosphere at 22,000mph. Small parachutes will then bring the Beagle down to a gentle speed before it lands on large air bags.

Once on the inhospitable surface of Mars, the small 60kg lander, which is about the size of a motorcycle wheel and resembles a large pocket watch, will deploy, unfurling solar panels to gain power before taking pictures and rock and soil samples in order to answer the age old question of whether there is, or was, life on Mars.

Scientists will be keeping watch from a small office at the Open University in Milton Keynes.

While Beagle 2, named after the ship which carried Charles Darwin to Tierra del Fuego in Chile, digs and tests for signs of life, Mars Express will act as a receiver, taking the pictures and information from Beagle 2 and beaming it back to Earth for analysis.

Professor Colin Pillinger, head of the planetary sciences research unit at the Open University and the creator of the project said: "It is exciting to think that Europe's first adventure to a planet will involve both orbiter and lander science."

PPARC chief executive Professor Ian Halliday said: "Mars has always fascinated us. The world has continually postulated on the Red Planet harbouring life and this awesome mission in which the UK has played such 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?"