Paris

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been forced to allocate 36 million euros (US$32 million) to a UK-designed lander to ensure that it is ready for launch as part of the Mars Express mission in 2003.

But members of ESA's Scientific Programme Committee, who agreed the extra funds on 4 December, said that no more money will be made available for the lander, which is called Beagle 2. They added that Mars Express — Europe's first mission to the red planet — will fly with or without the lander.

Beagle 2, which will search for organic material on Mars, was a late addition to Mars Express and costs for it were not included in the original budget of 150 million euros, which was finalized in 1996. The Beagle 2 consortium, led by Colin Pillinger of the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, was given the go-ahead to join the mission in 1998, provided it could raise sufficient funds. The consortium has since raised enough money from the British government, industry and private sponsorship deals to build the lander and its instruments.

But the inclusion of Beagle 2 is adding costs to the mission itself, such as those associated with keeping the lander in sterile conditions during the journey to Mars. ESA officials say they had expected to contribute something towards these, but that technical problems have increased the amount the agency will need to spend.

“We are doing everything we can to support Beagle 2,” says Marcello Coradini, ESA's programme coordinator for Solar System missions.

Beagle 2's soft-landing system, which is made up of three gas-filled airbags, was responsible for the latest hitch. One or more of the airbags burst on inflation during tests last month at NASA's Plum Brook facility in Sandusky, Ohio. Such setbacks are delaying the lander's incorporation into the project, raising ESA's costs.

Pillinger remains confident that the project is on track, and points out that NASA needed extensive testing for the airbag system on Pathfinder, a craft that successfully landed on Mars in 1997. “We have a five-month contingency in our testing schedule for the airbags and plenty of time to adjust the design,” he says.