In the years that followed the Beagle 2 mission, the UK contributed significantly to flagship space projects, including the Rosetta comet chaser and the James Webb Space Telescope.
“Beagle 2 started the UK down the line of being able to do planetary missions and knowing it could engineer them,” said Professor Mark Sims, who managed the Beagle 2 mission.
A more recent example is the ExoMars Rover, Rosalind Franklin, which is due for launch in 2028 with the aim of finding out if life has ever existed on Mars.
“It’s a European Space Agency mission but the rover was built in Stevenage and it will land on Mars hopefully in 2030 and look for signs of life which is what Beagle 2 was aiming to do,” Sims said.
