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My Life on Mars - The Beagle 2 Diaries

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"My Life on Mars" is a dual autobiography - mine interwoven with the untold story (including the bits some people didn't want anybody to know) of Beagle 2. For seven years the British mission to look for life on the Red Planet captivated the public all over the World.

I didn't come from a background that would make me an obvious candidate to lead a space mission to Mars. Neither were its crew anything that could be described as conventional. After working on the Apollo programme I was involved in demonstrating that meteorites coming from Mars could be found on Earth. What's more they contained tantalising evidence of the remains of microscopic organisms. The possibility that we had found life had once existed on Mars was so exciting it was announced by the President of the United States from the White House lawn. But it was controversial; so in 1996 I gathered an unlikely team consisting of the rock band Blur, the country's most controversial artist Damien Hirst, combined them with top university scientists and the best engineers available from the satellite industry. We took on the Establishment and the European Space Agency, challenged NASA, designed a spacecraft on the back of a beer mat, built it in a garage and set off 250 million miles to prove we were not alone in the Universe. My wife, Judith, named the spacecraft Beagle 2; it had the British Nation on the edge of its seat at Christmas 2003.

My Life on Mars (The Beagle 2 Diaries) then is Colin Pillinger's story and the full, previously undisclosed, account of the Beagle 2 mission drawn from thirty notebooks filled with the day to day happenings in a project that generated thousands of reports in the media as far away as Japan, Australia, the USA and even South America.

Published by the British Interplanetary Society (ISBN 978-0-9506597-3-2), My Life on Mars became available in October, 2010, in hard back with dust cover. It has 368 text pages with 32 plates, 100 photographs most in full colour at a RRP £20.00 or £16.50 (plus P&P) when purchased via the British Interplanetary Society's website; for signed and dedicated copies please contact the author.

Space is a Funny Place

"Space is a Funny Place" takes a sideways look at space exploration and scientific discoveries as seen through the medium of cartoons. It is fifty years since the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched. Even before the space race started, cartoonists were illustrating life on other planets and featuring comet apparitions. More recently, missions to the Moon, Mars and other planets have provided fertile ground for cartoon jokes, especially when something goes wrong. Beagle 2 was expected to land on Mars on 25 December 2003 when no communication was established I was not surprised cartoonists put forward their own explanations.

Cartoons have provided me with an original way to explain the science and engineering problems encountered during space exploration.

Extending to 224 pages, the book is hard bound, and printed on high quality paper. It is lavishly illustrated in colour both with cartoons (over 220 cartoons from 170 cartoonists past and present and from many countries are represented) and images from decades of space exploration.

Chapters:

A limited number of the books have been produced and copies are available at £15.00 plus p&p direct from the author and will be signed if requested.

Beagle - from Sailing Ship to Mars Spacecraft

This book is about ships carrying the name HMS Beagle that travelled the world and the Beagle 2 spacecraft sent to land on Mars in 2003 to search for life. Written and published in 2003 immediately following the launch of Mars Express carrying the Beagle 2 spacecraft to Mars, the book explains why the lander was named Beagle 2.

I tie in stories of historic acts of bravery and adventure, using the maritime connection to provide a timeline of the quest to discover life on Mars, the first step in knowing if we are alone in the universe. I outline what Beagle 2 was designed to do on Mars, how it would get there and how the spacecraft was constructed, alongside descriptions of the moist famous HMS Beagle, the third in the line aboard which Charles Darwin travelled round the world and led to him writing "On the Origin of Species".

The book was written for a general audience and resulted in part from much research which was carried out to put together an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich titled "The Beagle Voyages - from Earth to Mars". Extending to 176 pages, the book is hard bound, printed on high quality paper and is illustrated with many colour pictures.

A small number of copies of the limited edition (2003) are still available.

Following publication of the limited edition, the book was reissued by Faber and Faber as "Beagle from Darwin's epic voyage to the British mission to Mars". It is available to buy in bookshops or online.

The Guide to Beagle 2

Following the launch of Beagle 2, and in anticipation of a successful landing and scientific study, I wrote and published "The Guide to Beagle 2" in conjunction with two of my colleagues, Mark Sims and Jim Clemmet.

Writing in the preface, I explained that: "Since the public and media interest has played no little part in getting Beagle 2 this far, the project intends to share the results, everything, with its supporters."

In order that everyone can follow the mission, Beagle 2 needed a guidebook, an explanation of how it was designed, the science rationale behind the mission, in other words, the complete technical story of Beagle 2.

Summary of sections:

• Prologue - the science that led to Beagle 2
• The Beagle 2 probe
• Entry, descent and landing system
• Planetary protection
• The landing site, dust storms and Mars Express orbit insertion
• The Beagle 2 lander - base, lid, clamp band, main hinge, solar arrays, how do solar cells work, panel hinges, power outputs, battery, common electronics, timer, transceiver, antenna, electronics module, central processor, software, parachutes, protected gas bags, gas generator, control of pyrotechnics and mechanisms, harness, thermal model, opening sequence and much, much more Science objectives
• The science package - the gas analysis package, paw, environmental sensors, orbiter payload
• Operation on Mars
• Comparison with other Mars missions

Read this book and you will know all about Beagle 2, except of course what happened to the spacecraft!

Beagle 2 Bulletins

Throughout the Beagle 2 project I authored a newspaper which was published irregularly (usually associated with some landmark or event) to keep people up to date with the activities and news about the project. Each edition (4 pages long) had a print run between 5-10000 copies. in a tabloid format, was distributed to the public. A total of 17 editions were eventually produced to provide a documentary history of Beagle 2 from inception to the time when attempts to communicate with the spacecraft ceased...

Book signings

The picture shows an event in Oxford where I did a book signing with Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott.