Mars

Ten million years ago it was awash with oceans of water. Now it is desert dry. But research published today shows that organic life could still be lurking on Mars.

Scientists will be poring over a slew of papers published by the teams from the US space agency Nasa reporting the results garnered from the two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, that landed at the beginning of this year and are still exploring opposite sides of the Red Planet.

Even before today's formal publication in the journal Science, many scientists were abuzz over the earliest of the findings, which suggested that water once flowed all over the surface, and is now sequestered beneath it, probably still in liquid form. Furthermore the gas methane, normally associated with biological activity, has been detected in the atmosphere.

"Their findings such as sedimentary rocks [which indicate oceanic activity] are very exciting," said Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, who led the team that developed the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 lander.

"And they are also saying that there's methane in the atmosphere there - which must mean a continuous supply, or it would disappear. My preference is that [methane] is generated through a biological supply - even the reprocessing of already-dead biological material by another living source."

For Professor Pillinger the findings lend extra frustration to the loss of the Beagle 2 lander, last heard of heading towards the Martian atmosphere on Christmas Eve. But he declined to express regret: "We'll get there one day," he said. "I wrote a letter to Nasa three weeks ago suggesting a Beagle 3 lander as a stand-alone element to be included with their 2009 Mars Science Laboratory mission. " He has yet to hear back from the agency.

The work represents the most thorough geological examination ever of a planet other than Earth, offering key insights into how its development resembled and departed from that of our own.

British scientists and engineers are pushing for a new Beagle 2 mission to Mars by 2007, or 2009 at the latest. Although the first British attempt to land on another planet failed when the tiny spacecraft reached Mars on Christmas Day and fell silent, the Beagle team still believes it could work.

Colin Pillinger, the Open University scientist who dreamed up the venture in 1998 and pushed it to a £50m reality in five years, revealed yesterday that he had invited the US space agency Nasa to consider Beagle 2 as an instrument for its Martian mobile science laboratory in 2009.

"It could have worked. And it should have worked," he said. "It didn't work, and we don't know the reason why. But there is no reason to believe that there was any fault in the technology of this mission which wouldn't allow us to take it to Mars if the circumstances were right.

"We achieved 81% of the work of 20 months in this project. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason why we couldn't launch a demonstrator lander which carried the science of Beagle 2, and build it in time for a 2007 launch.

"I think a 2007 launch can be achieved if a decision is taken during 2004. This is exploration. Things go wrong. We would never fly Beagle 2 as it is. We would see where we could improve it. I will stick my neck out and say that the team is looking at whatever opportunities exist for the future. We are looking at all opportunities and every opportunity."

Beagle 2 was a phenomenon in British space science. It was proposed, almost off the cuff, by Professor Pillinger after Nasa scientists in 1996 claimed to have found evidence of ancient microbial life in a meteorite known to have come from the red planet. US scientists began to design two robot geologists, both of which landed successfully in January.