Boost for life on Mars hunt

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Express at May 24, 2002 12:00 PM

Britain's project to land a probe to look for life on Mars next year has received a big boost in the form of a £2.6m grant. The money comes from the Wellcome Trust, the medical research charity which has funded a large portion of the Human Genome Project. The cash will go towards developing a miniature mass spectrometer, one of the instruments the Beagle 2 lander will need to search for signs of past or present life. The director of the Wellcome Trust says that building the instrument could lead to extremely useful medical spin-offs.