The Beagle 2 was a British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency’s 2003 Mars Express mission. It was an astrobiology mission that would have looked for past life on the shallow surface of Mars.
The spacecraft was successfully deployed from the Mars Express on 19 December 2003 and was scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on 25 December; however, no contact was received at the expected time of landing on Mars. ESA declared the mission lost in February 2004, after numerous attempts to contact the spacecraft were made.[4]
The Beagle 2’s fate remained a mystery until January 2015 when it was located on the surface of Mars in a series of images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera.[5][6] The images suggest that it landed safely, but two of the spacecraft’s four solar panels failed to deploy, blocking the spacecraft’s communications antenna.
The Beagle 2 is named after HMS Beagle, the ship used by Charles Darwin.