Lander (spacecraft) a landing which should have come on 25 December 2003 was not received. Indeed, no communication was ever established and "Beagle 2" was declared lost on 6 February 2004. The proposed 2009 British Beagle 3 lander mission to search for life, past or present was not adopted. The French/ESA NetLander mission for 2007 or 2009, with an orbiter and 4 landers, was cancelled because it was too expensive. Its successor, Mars MetNet, a multi-lander mission for 2011–2019 was not adopted by the ESA. The American Mars Exploration Rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" were launched in June and July 2003. They reached
Robinson Crusoe on Mars Butler and Academy Award-winning matte artist Albert Whitlock gave the film the benefit of "big-studio resources usually lacking in movies about outer space". Whitlock provided the matte paintings used in "Robinson Crusoe on Mars". "Some scenes of spacecraft in motion were created with the kind of flat animation seen in official NASA promotional films". For the alien spacecraft, designer Albert Nozaki constructed three miniatures closely resembling the "Martian war machines" he had made previously for Haskin for "The War of the Worlds" (1953). Byron Haskin told his interviewer Joe Adamson, “"Robinson Crusoe on Mars" was so obviously a director’s tour