Toby Jones to Star in New Film About Britain's Lost Mars Lander Mission

Bafta-winning actors Toby Jones and Emily Watson have completed work on a new feature film titled Mars Express. Directed by Mackenzie Crook, the film tells the story of planetary sciences professor Colin Pillinger and his wife Judith, who developed the Beagle 2 probe to search for life on Mars. The unmanned probe launched on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and was due to land on Christmas Day in 2003, but it failed to send a confirmation signal and went out of contact. Although the mission was considered a failure for years, images taken by Nasa in January 2015 eventually showed that the lander had reached the surface safely, eight months after Pillinger passed away following a brain haemorrhage.