Up Up And...Who Knows?

By Rob Last edited 232 months ago
Up Up And...Who Knows?

Never let it be said that the British are quitters. In the face of humiliation and a general feeling that we're just not as good as everyone else, you can always count on us to come back out fighting.

Like Paula Radcliffe at Athens. Like Tim Henman at Wimbledon every bloody year. And now, like the mission to put something named Beagle on Mars.

marvin.gifFollowing last year's aborted attempts to put Beagle 2 on the face of the red planet, it was announced today that the satisfyingly eccentric Colin Pillinger and his team of scientists are planning to try and put another robotic lab on the surface of Mars.

The craft will not, however, be called Beagle 3. Instead the project is to be titled Beagle 2: Evolution in order "to keep the original mission's well-known brand".

That's right lads, if something's well known then keep the name. It doesn't matter that it was well known for never actually getting to where it was supposed to be going. Or that it was beaten soundly into second place by the Americans.

Beagle 2: Evolution has a scheduled launch date of 2009, by which time Londonist predicts the Martians will already have sent back the original Beagle with "No junk mail please, return to sender" scrawled across it.

Last Updated 03 November 2004