New Mars

Adrian Hon presents an in-depth report on the first Mars Society UK Symposium. With speakers from Dr. Robert Zubrin to Prof. Colin Pillinger, the director of the Beagle 2 Mars lander, the symposium certainly had an interesting range of presentations and was by all accounts a resounding success.

It’s been over three and a half years since the Mars Society held its founding convention in Colorado, and during that time nearly forty international chapters have been set up. Of these forty, the United Kingdom sits in the top three in terms of membership, yet even so it’s always seemed to me that the UK chapter is akin to an embattled and outnumbered group of soldiers stuck in enemy territory, struggling against the odds. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances including the government’s stated disinterest in space exploration, and manned space exploration in particular, people in the UK are on the whole apathetic about the whole idea of sending people into space.

Consequently, when the Mars Society UK held its first Symposium on 19th January, I saw this as a huge achievement for the chapter and for the entire UK space advocacy community in general. Attended by around 100 people and covered by the BBC, the symposium had an array of first class speakers from across the world, including Robert Zubrin, the President of Mars Society International. I travelled to Milton Keynes to cover the event for New Mars

For those readers who are unfamiliar with Milton Keynes, the town has a slightly unusual reputation in the UK. Unlike most towns in this country, which have tended to grow randomly and haphazardly all over the countryside, Milton Keynes is a ‘new town’ in the sense that it was completely planned in the 1960’s and has a peculiar grid street layout. It’s really just like any new US town, which I suppose is probably why it has the unusual reputation. In any case, it has excellent transport links which was one of the key reasons for holding the symposium there. Need to Know, a weekly satirical UK technology newsletter, commented on the symposium, “the National Hockey Stadium Conference Centre, out on the windswept dunes of Milton Keynes, is surely the ideal venue to discuss terraforming a futuristic habitation in an unforgivingly alien environment. (Did you see what we did there? Milton Keynes, Mars - oh never mind.)”

9:40 am

On arriving at the reception, I immediately saw a few familiar faces from the UK Mars and space scene, and simultaneously a feeling a release washed over me; finally, if only for a day, there now existed a place in the UK where it was positively encouraged for people to talk to others about Mars without receiving looks of complete confusion. Before I could become too excited by the novelty of the situation, the first introductory talk began.

	Bo Maxwell giving the opening speech

10:00 am

Bo Maxwell, the President of the Mars Society UK, kicked off the proceedings by introducing the various speakers and outlining the schedule for the day. During his introduction, I managed to spot Robert Zubrin sitting to one side on the front row, recognisable by his unique hair pattern.

10:10 am

The first presentation of the symposium was given by Professor Colin Pillinger, the man behind the Beagle 2 Mars Lander which will be launched by the ESA Mars Express mission in 2003. Prof. Pillinger wryly remarked that as well as being the first speaker at the first Mars Society UK symposium, he was also the first ever speaker to a Mars Society meeting in the world, due to the fact that the Mars Society UK staged their first meeting before the founding convention occurred in 1998.

Starting out with the history of the Beagle 2’s namesake, Prof. Pillinger talked about the ship HMS Beagle that carried Charles Darwin on his voyage around the world that resulted in his writing of the revolutionary On the Origin of Species, detailing the process of evolution via natural selection. Darwin’s father said of his son’s voyage that it, ‘a wild scheme, it would be a useless undertaking,’ a sentiment shared by other scientists when they first heard of Prof. Pillinger’s plan to send a UK probe to Mars. Of course, despite this the original HMS Beagle was a startling success and Prof. Pillinger hopes that the Beagle 2 will follow in its footsteps.

A brief history of the idea of life existing on other worlds followed, including Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Lord Kelvin, the latter individual notably claiming that life on Earth may have originated from a meteorite, based on his belief that the age of Earth was only 100 million years. Lord Kelvin wasn’t alone on this matter, indeed, Louis Pasteur is known to have examined meteorites for micro-organisms. Unsurprisingly, his search was not successful.

Prof. Colin Pillinger (left) and Dr. Mark Sims

In more recent years, scientists concluded that the meteorite EETA79001, discovered in 1979, originated from Mars, due to the isotopic composition of gas trapped inside being identical to that measured in Mars’ atmosphere by the Viking Landers. Since then, more meteorites have been identified as having a Martian origin, including of course ALH84001, ‘the most famous meteorite’ which has caused so much controversy over whether it shows signs of past life. Prof. Pillinger gave a brief overview of the arguments for and against ALH84001 harbouring past life, and summed up by saying that as the meteorite has no absolutely undeniable signs of life, we should not draw any conclusions from it. After all, he said, it is not enough to be 90% sure or 95% sure when it comes to life on Mars; we must be 100% sure.

And of course, the only way to be completely sure is by gathering more evidence and sending more probes to Mars - which is where the Beagle 2 comes in. Prof. Pillinger discussed his team’s efforts in attempting to find funding for the probe (the UK government contributed

Filed under: Articles on January 25th, 2002