LONDON: It has been a source of mystery — and fear — to human beings throughout history. The Romans believed it was the bringer of war, the Babylonians called it the Star of Death. Some astronomers believed it was the home of an ancient Civilization.

Now a tiny British probe, Beagle 2, is set to uncover the mysteries of the Red Planet and answer a question that has stumped scientists for centuries: is there life on Mars?

The little craft, built for just pounds sterling 35 million, must first survive a series of critical manoeuvres that will set it on course for a landing in the crater of Isidis Planitia on Christmas morning. The first, and most crucial, of these events will be on Friday, when Beagle’s Spin-Up and Eject Mechanism (Suem) will separate it from its mother ship, the Mars Express.

“Beagle has no rockets,” says its creator, Prof Colin Pillinger, of the UK’s Open University. “So we will have to line up the craft using Mars Express and then fire the Suem release mechanism.”

TV images transmitted by Mars Express should show Beagle — which carries a suite of instruments for discovering if life exists or once existed on the planet — drifting ahead of the mother ship. Powerless, blind, and silent, the spaceship will then spend the next six days gliding the last two million miles to Mars before plunging into its atmosphere on Christmas Day. At the last minute, Mars Express — following close behind — will blast itself into Martian orbit where it will use a battery of instruments to seek out water, ice and key chemicals below the planet’s surface.

Failure on Friday would leave Beagle clamped to Mars Express. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.