Beagle 2 Beagle 2 The Beagle 2 was a British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 "Mars Express" mission. It was an astrobiology mission that would have looked for past life on the shallow surface of Mars. The spacecraft was successfully deployed from the "Mars Express" on 19 December 2003 and was scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on 25 December; however, no contact was received at the expected time of landing on Mars. ESA declared the mission lost in February 2004, after numerous attempts to contact the spacecraft were made. The "Beagle 2" fate
Mars program The project was canceled due to the low reliability of the Igla automatic docking system. Mars program The Mars program was a series of unmanned spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters. Early Mars spacecraft were small, and launched by Molniya rockets. Starting with two failures in 1969, the heavier Proton-K rocket was used to launch larger 5 tonne spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter and a lander to Mars. The orbiter bus design was likely somewhat rushed into service and immature, considering that