19 December
2003: on 19 December 2003, ESA's Mars Express released its Beagle 2 lander and set it on a trajectory for a landing on Mars.
At 9:31 CET, a sequence began to separate the Beagle 2 lander from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device was fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which gently pushed Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft. An image from the on-board visual monitoring camera showed the lander drifting away.
On Christmas Day 2003, ESA's Mars Express successfully arrived in orbit around Mars. In early January, the Beagle 2 lander had still not yet signalled its safe landing.
By February 2004, Beagle 2 had failed to communicate since its first radio contact was missed after it was due to land on Christmas Day. The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost.
