Tim Furniss
Another new UK space minister visited Farnborough yesterday, praising the virtues of public-private partnerships in space but unable to offer even a few million pounds to kick-start what could be the most prestigious UK space mission for years.
Lord Sainsbury, successor to John Battle, whose reign as space chief must be the shortest on record, announced a $17 million boost for navigation and Earth observation work, including a 25% UK stake in work towards the development of a proposed European navigation satellite system.
Initial investment amounts to $8 million, while $9 million has been put into the first phase of the ESA Living Planet Earth observation programme and investment in a processing facility at Farnborough for the new Envisat observation satellite to be launched in 2000.
The new minister says, however, that the pot is empty when it comes to supporting the UK-led Beagle 2 Mars lander which could fly on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter in 2003.
The proposal for Beagle came in too late to be included in already-agreed science budgets, Lord Sainsbury says, indicating that a more flexible approach was not his responsibility.
A small token of funding in Beagle 2 could help to kick-start private investment. A British team of scientists have until 30 October to receive commitment of $40 million to launch a spacecraft to land on Mars in 2003.
EXPERIMENTS
The lander would carry a suite of small experiments to seek evidence for past life on the Red Planet. It includes an ingenious "mole" which will burrow under the soil and bring out small samples to be analysed by the craft's in-house laboratory.
The proposed Beagle 2 lander - which can be seen on the BNSC stand in Hall 1 - is the brainchild of Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University and would fly as a piggyback payload on the $165 million Mars Express orbiter.
Source: Flight Daily News
