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
Timekeeping on Mars average length of a Martian sidereal day is (88,642.66300 seconds based on SI units), and the length of its solar day (often called a "sol") is (88,775.244147 seconds). The corresponding values for Earth are currently and , respectively. This yields a conversion factor of 1.02749125170 days/sol. Thus Mars' solar day is only about 2.7% longer than Earth's. A convention used by spacecraft lander projects to date has been to keep track of local solar time using a 24-hour "Mars clock" on which the hours, minutes and seconds are 2.7% longer than their standard (Earth) durations. For the Mars Pathfinder, Mars