Prodigal Son

Professor Colin Pillinger was an English planetary scientist. He was a founding member of the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute at the Open University in Milton Keynes. He was also the principal investigator for the British Beagle 2 Mars lander project.

Pillinger enlisted British rock band Blur to write a song to be Beagle 2 '​s call sign back home. It was to be broadcast as soon as Beagle 2 began work on the surface of Mars. He also persuaded the artist Damien Hurst to provide a spot painting to use in calibrating the spacecraft's camera.

The Beagle 2 was deemed a failure after the craft ceased to transmit data during its descent through the Martian atmosphere in December, 2003; it was presumed destroyed upon landing.

In the years that followed, both Pillinger and the European Space Administration exchanged recriminations as to the responsibility for the failure. Pillinger died two days before his 71st birthday  on 7 May, 2014.

On 16 January, 2015, the UK Space Agency confirmed that Beagle 2 had landed successfully on Mars on 25 December 2003.

Images taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) identified clear evidence for the lander and convincing evidence for key entry and descent components on the surface of Mars five kilometres from the centre of the expected landing area of Isidis Planitia (an impact basin close to the equator). The images suggested that one of the craft's solar panels failed to open, thus preventing the transmission of data signals to Earth.

A vindication of Pillinger and the science behind the Beagle 2 project, it is a lesson in moral philosophy that creates its own time line irrespective of bureaucracies and political posturing. When the next phase of Martian exploration begins, with its (compared to the diminutive Beagle 2) giant machines scouring the planet for data, perhaps it will be in the vicinity of the earlier craft, its silvery white outline glinting through the red terrain.