David Southwood from the Cassini mission to Saturn, landed successfully on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Southwood later described the Huygens landing as "the highest point of all" from his ESA career. Southwood had also led the team which developed the magnetometer on the main Cassini spacecraft. During 2003 ESA launched a largely British lander, Beagle 2, which was carried to Mars by the larger Mars Express spacecraft. All contact with Beagle 2 was lost before it reached the surface of Mars, and the project was considered a failure. ESA was heavily criticised for its management of the mission. Southwood suffered public criticism
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