RUSSIA: A Russian rocket blasted off last night carrying Europe's contender to find life on Mars, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
Beagle 2, an ingenious British space probe named after Charles Darwin's ship, will announce its planned Christmas Day arrival on the Red Planet with a tune from pop band Blur.
The specially composed nine-note signal is one of a host of idiosyncrasies and innovations that the European Space Agency (ESA) hopes will help Beagle 2 eclipse two US rivals and a Japanese craft due to reach the planet soon after.
The ESA prepared its Mars Express spacecraft, which consists of Beagle 2 and an orbiter to relay information to earth, for just €300 million, less than half the cost of the NASA rovers that are preparing to take off as Mars and Earth come closer together than they have been for 60,000 years.
Beagle 2, the brainchild of Professor Colin Pillinger of Britain's Open University, weighs just 65 kg, and would fit into a wheelbarrow.
It cannot move once on Mars, but unfolds to reveal solar panels, a robotic arm, a host of sensors, cameras and test chambers, a microscope, and a sampling arm - the "Mole" - designed to dig through Martian soil to search for signs of water and life.
Once released from the Russian Soyuz rocket, Mars Express faces a six-month, 250,000,000-mile trip through space. Five days before Beagle 2's planned touchdown on Mars, it will separate from the orbiter to parachute towards the planet's surface.
Waiting for those crucial nine notes from Blur, scientists at England's Jodrell Bank observatory will be the first to know whether Beagle 2 has survived the trip.