From NewScientist<br /><br /><b>ESA to tackle Mars once more</b><br />17 June 2006 <br /><br />THE last time Europeans tried to land on Mars it was a disaster: the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 probe simply crashed on the Red Planet. So ESA is getting ready to redress this. On Monday it said it has learned lessons from Beagle 2 for its ExoMars mission, which will look for chemical signs of life on Mars.<br /><br />After a two-year journey following its launch in 2011, the spacecraft will use parachutes, retrorockets and airbags to soft-land. Then it will release a rover to roam across the planet.<br /><br />The rover will be more autonomous than NASA's robots, Spirit and Opportunity. It will also carry a sophisticated chemistry set to experiment on rocks and look for signatures of life, such as amino acids.<br /><br />An inquiry commissioned by ESA and the UK government concluded that the Beagle 2 project was hastily planned and treated as a minor add-on to the Mars Express mission. ESA's Bruno Gardini says the mistakes will not be repeated. "There is one fundamental difference: it is not an add-on," he says.<br /><br /><br /><b>Europe's new Mars probe to banish ghost of Beagle 2 </b><br />15:09 12 June 2006 <br /><br />Europe is gearing up to send another probe to the surface of Mars. At a press conference in London, UK, on Monday, scientists outlined their ambitions for the ExoMars mission, which will look for chemical signs of life, past or present, on the Martian surface.<br /><br />The UK will be a major contributor to ExoMars, due for launch in 2011. If successful, it would heal some disappointment over the failure of the British Beagle 2 lander in 2003. “The UK is actively preparing to return to Mars,” said John Zarnecki, a planetary scientist from the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. <br /><br />The European Space Agency mission will send a spacecraft to the Martian surface with a rover folded inside. After a two-year journey, the spacecraft will use parachutes, retroroc <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>