Denman animates Beagle 2 on Mars

It was a relatively mild Christmas this year, but the ill-fated British Mars lander Beagle 2 was plunged into temperatures of around -65C to -120C.
The Beagle 2 lander was scheduled to unwrap itself in readiness for its six month search for life on the Red Planet over Christmas, but as luck would have it back on Earth the only views of the initial phase of this event was via a cutting-edge 3D computer animation, produced by Denman Productions in Twickenham - the nearest thing to a 'real-time' view of what was planned to take place millions of miles away.
Anthony Gambier-Parry, founder of Denman, produced and directed the four and a half minute video simulation which has a specially written soundtrack by the band Blur. Anthony's first work in CGI was on Ridley Scott's epic sci-fi film 'Alien'. Having created the on-screen displays in the 'Nostromo' for the fictitious landing sequence for the film, Anthony found himself constructing the 'real thing' for the Beagle 2 project.
Anthony gained extensive experience in the business as a Lighting Cameraman and then Director before concentrating on CGI for television and the aerospace and advertising industries.
Remembering Alien, Anthony said: “It was very early days for CGI, on Alien there were no workstations or 3D animation packages in existence - we had to do everything from the ground up, even writing the source code. It was pioneering stuff!"
Beagle 2 is pioneering from a different perspective. Britain’s first spacecraft to go to another world hitched a ride on the European orbiter Mars Express, launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket.
The team, who again attempted to contact the lander on Wednesday January 7, hoped to see pictures of the real Martian surface from its on-board cameras. But in the meantime, excerpts from the animation showed the deployment of some of the lander's instruments including the 'Mole' which was designed to burrow down under the surface retrieving soil samples for analysis in the miniature laboratory inside the lander in an experiment to examine if life ever existed on Mars.
Some shots from the animation can be seen by downloading a showreel from the Denman website at www.denman.co.uk.
Also on the site is a Quicktime 360 degree panoramic view of the Martian surface which was created from the animation.
'Martian Sunset' Image courtesy of Denman Productions (All rights reserved Beagle 2)
(SP)