Pillinger was born in Kingswood near Bristol and completed his degree at Swansea University.
He gained international recognition for his lunar research before moving to Cambridge University, where he analysed meteorites found in Antarctica that were believed to have come from Mars.
By the 1980s, he had become one of the founders of the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute at The Open University in Milton Keynes.
It was here he conceived the idea of sending a lander, named Beagle 2 by his wife, to Mars, where it could study the red planet directly for signs of life.
