A flying barbecue is unveiled in Milton Keynes. Its mission: to find life on Mars

Yesterday a lump of metal the shape of a barbecue went on show to earthbound admirers in Milton Keynes. Its next public appearance will be in more than a year's time, in the equatorial region of another planet, and it could begin to explore one of the great mysteries: did life ever exist on Mars?

Beagle 2 is a neat package of sophisticated instruments designed to work at one-third of the Earth's gravity, and to survive the martian night at temperatures as low as -70C (-94F). It was built, despite doubts and downright opposition, by a consortium of university scientists and space engineers, led by Colin Pillinger of the Open University.

Yesterday, in a laboratory in Milton Keynes, the tiny spacecraft made its last earthly bow. It will be taken to a European space laboratory and installed aboard the European space agency's Mars Express.

A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch it on May 23, just as the red planet makes its closest approach to Earth for the past 60,000 years.

On December 19 2003, the mothership will spin Beagle 2 out into the void before going into orbit around Mars.

Beagle 2 will then slam into the thin martian atmosphere at 14,000mph, and begin to slow down. At 1,500mph the heat shield will fall away and a tiny parachute will drag out a much bigger one to slow Beagle 2 to about 40mph.

At 200 metres from the ground, airbags will inflate to cushion the craft as it smashes into a region of Mars known as Isidis Planitia. This is flattish terrain, marked by relatively recent volcanic eruptions. If it lands upside down, a hinge will flip it up the right way. If all is well, the orphan spaceship will send back an "I have arrived" call sign composed by the Britpop band Blur.

"Everyone in this programme will know exactly what is going on at any second, but we will not be able to communicate with Beagle," Professor Pillinger said.

"Beagle is going to be a very lonely craft in those five days and we will be there with fingers and toes crossed. We will be pleased when we get a signal back."

Beagle 2 will flip open to expose solar-power collectors, then lift a robot arm carrying a camera, microscope and a battery of sensors. It will calibrate its instruments by using a spot painting by the British artist Damien Hirst, and then slowly, over the next 50 days, it will begin a series of probes.

A drill will dig into surface rock. A mechanical mole will dig deep under the Martian surface. A tiny onboard oven will bake soil samples and a mass spectrometer will meas ure the elements in the gases from the rock, looking for the signature of chemicals that could have an organic origin.

"This is a device which is built to try to answer a very fundamental question: is there life out there in the solar system?" Prof Pillinger said.

Focus on the red planet

· In the 19th century, astronomers claimed to see canals on Mars - and Martians invaded Earth in HG Wells's The War of the Worlds

· Until 1976, scientists still hoped to find life on Mars - perhaps slow-growing

· The Viking Lander experiments in the 70s revealed a desert - but orbiters showed Mars must once have been wet

· In 1996 a Nasa team studied a meteorite known to have come from Mars, and claimed to have found fossilised bacteria

· Since then, other instruments have detected frozen water under the martian surface and mapped clear patterns left by rivers

· Beagle 2 will beat two Nasa landers by just a few days. Future spacecraft will bring martian rock back to Earth - and the European space agency is contemplating a manned mission one day