John Thatcher – The Beagle 2 Mars Lander

Beagle 2 was an extraordinary project in so many ways and like no other in terms of organisation and execution.  It was primarily looking for signs of extinct and/or extant life on Mars and was way ahead of its time in terms of the integrated science package.  It was remarkably small physically and had the highest ratio of science payload mass to total mass ever achieved.  Much of the inside story of the project has never been told and this talk lifts the lid on some of it.

John retired in May 2013 after over 30 years working in the space industry, mainly involved in spacecraft engineering and project management. He began his career as an aerothermodynamicist at Rolls-Royce Aero Engines in Derby.  He also worked briefly in the nuclear power industry before joining what was then British Aerospace at Stevenage working on communication satellites and subsequently moving on to scientific spacecraft.

During his career ‘in space’ he has been fortunate to have worked on most aspects of spacecraft engineering covering design, development, manufacture, integration, test, launch and operations of communication and scientific missions, including the industrial management of the Beagle 2 Mars lander project in its early years. For his last decade at work John was the European Consortium Project Manager for the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope managing it through to delivery to NASA in 2012.