The 2015 Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Industry/Project Team was given to the combined Beagle 2 industrial and academic team. The team, who is popularly known to be the brains behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, received the distinction seven months after the confirmation of their spacecraft's successful landing by the UK Space Agency.
The awarding ceremony was held during the UK Space Conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, July 14 and Wednesday, July 15. On behalf of the entire team, the award was received by Professor Mark Sims, former mission manager of the Beagle 2 and a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr Jim Clemmet, retired former chief engineer of the Beagle 2 mission from the Airbus Space and Defence.
"It was a great pleasure to accept the award with Jim Clemmet on behalf of the whole Beagle 2 team," said Sims. As the overall leader of the Beagle 2 project Colin Pillinger, as well as Dave Barnes and George Fraser all passed away last year, it is such a tremendous letdown for them to not be able to witness this day and receive the award, he adds. For Sims, the award is a testament of the extraordinary efforts exerted by the entire team, industry and academia in order to plan, create and launch the Beagle to the surface of the red planet.
The Beagle 2 landed on the surface of Mars on the Christmas day of 2003, as per the images generated by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The spacecraft then began deploying its solar panels as planned to communicate with Earth; however, only two or three of the four panels worked thus, disabling the experts to know what actually happened and finally urging them to believe that it indeed got lost. In January 2015, 11 years after everyone believed that it was lost, Beagle 2 was found on the surface of Mars. The discovery of the spacecraft is said to be an evidence that the calculations and efforts of the team were indeed accurate. The breakthrough in Martian exploration is a victory for the field of engineering, considering that the mission was subjected to weight, time, funding and Martian environment challenges.
Beagle 2 was the first mission of UK to another planet. The mission was made possible through the collaboration of the University of Leicester, The Open University and Airbus Defence and Space.
The Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Industry/Project Team honors the notable and excellent achievements made by a team for the industry of space.
