Posted by tourdemars to Mars Express at April 3, 2002 12:00 PM

Next year, a set of complex, temperamental and hugely expensive scientific instruments will be strapped to the top of a rocket and violently shaken as they are launched into space. Six months later, they will be hurled into the atmosphere of Mars at 14,000mph. Cushioned by balloons, they will bounce to the surface, roll to a stop and then switch themselves on without, it is hoped, a single glitch. The scientists behind the Beagle 2 project have spent the past few weeks making sure that those vibrations, knocks and shakes will not scupper their £30 million project to send a British probe to Mars in search of evidence of life. The British team has less than 10 months to finish Beagle 2. The probe must be delivered to the European Space Agency (ESA) by next January.