Beagle 2 was six whole years of highs and lows. Right from the word go, we encountered problem after problem and were constantly having to find solutions to those problems. There isn’t time to sit back and count your chickens when you’re going into space. I kept using the analogy of the FA Cup. Throughout those six years, we were taking part in logistical football matches. If we won one match, we’d go through to the next round, play another match and so on.

Getting Beagle 2 landed on Mars was the semifinal. Getting Beagle 2 to perform its experiments and send the information back to us would have been like winning the final. That’s when we’d lift the cup and I’d get my winner’s medal. That’s when I could start answering questions about whether we’d found life on Mars.

The last test we ran on Beagle 2 was on December 17, 2003. That test said everything was working fine and we began preparing for December 19, when Beagle was due to separate from the European Space Agency’s [ESA] Mars Express orbiting spacecraft and start heading for Mars. It was due to land at 2.54am on Christmas Day but we weren’t expecting to hear anything from it until 5.28am, when Nasa had an antenna in the right place to pick up the signal.

Yes, I was getting excited, but I’m a scientist and I know there’s no point getting excited until you have results. To return to the football analogy, you don’t go telling people you’ve won the FA Cup until the ref blows the final whistle. When Christmas morning came and we knew Beagle was about to touch down, I showed a film I’d put together — images that showed people what was happening as it headed for Mars. My wife, my son and daughter were all involved in the project, so there was quite a family atmosphere at the Open University offices in London, where we were based. It didn’t feel like Christmas, though. I think Christmas gets cancelled in space.

I’d got this music pumping away in the background. It was a song by a band called East 17 — one of the lads came to see us a few days before — and it was called It’s Alright. I kept playing it and it kept repeating the words “It’s alright” and “Our time has come”. Real, strong, motivational stuff. Didn’t make any bloody difference to the outcome, sadly.

Anyway, 5.28 came and Nasa — who gave us nothing but help — started listening. Nothing. Okay, no need to start panicking. All sorts of emotions were going off in my head, but no matter what I was feeling, I couldn’t start sobbing into my hands, saying: “Gosh, isn’t it terrible?”

Landing on another planet isn’t easy. Two-thirds of Mars missions have failed, but if Beagle had landed it would have gone into its pre-programmed routines. We needed to keep looking for it. We knew it would try to keep talking to us up to the end of February, when the computer program ran its course. Those two months were awful. I gave a press conference on January 7, telling people the problem was a bit more serious than we thought and… let me tell you, there were some pretty hard press guys in that audience who were almost in tears. That’s how much Beagle inspired people. At times like that, I’d often reach for my book of quotations. I remember reading one from David Hume: “The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it.” In science, second place isn’t good enough. I was the guy who had to keep saying: “Right, let’s move on to the next phase.”

I’ve always been like that. Even when we passed that February deadline and knew this was the end of Beagle 2, I said: “Okay, let’s see what we’ve learnt from this mission and have another try.” There were a few noises from ESA about something happening in 2007 but it didn’t come to anything. I think that’s lunacy. It’s that idiot thing we Brits do each time something goes wrong. If it had been Nasa behind the project, they’d have jumped straight back on the bloody horse, but ESA came up with a plan for something in 2009, then it was 2011, then 2013, now it’s late 2015. You don’t inspire people with a plan like that.

A lot of things were said in the aftermath of Beagle. It’s the typical reaction when something goes wrong: blame the management. A lot of it was levelled at me. I’m sorry, but that was unfair and a cop-out. And it wasn’t the reaction I was getting from the public. I’ve never had anyone come up to me and say: “Here, mate, you wasted a load of taxpayers’ money on that Beagle.” Most of them want to buy me a pint.

Thanks to Nasa, I’m still looking for Beagle. Every now and then they send over some photos of Mars and I have a look to see if there’s anything out there. Just that one pixel that could be Beagle. If I do find it, I can go back and say: “See, it landed. We got there. There were just a couple of things that went wrong. That’s all. Let’s bloody well get back up there and have another go.” s

Interview by Danny Scott.

Photographs: Dylan Thomas