Lost and found: United Kingdom's Beagle 2 seen on Mars 11 years on

A British-built probe which vanished 11 years ago has been found on the surface of Mars, scientists said on Friday, solving an enduring mystery of space exploration.

A British-built probe which vanished 11 years ago has been found on the surface of Mars, scientists said on Friday, solving an enduring mystery of space exploration.

Joy at the discovery was tinged with sadness that it came a year after the death of Professor Colin Pillinger, the eccentric but brilliant driving force behind the 2003 mission.

In these images provided by Nasa annotations show a bright feature interpreted as the United Kingdom's Beagle 2 Lander with solar arrays at least partially deployed on the surface of Mars. (Nasa)

Pillinger, whose mutton-chop sideburns helped make him one of Britain’s favourite mad scientist figures, raised much of the money for the launch himself and died frustrated at the lack of support for a follow-up mission.

“Thomas Edison developed 50 ways of not making a working light bulb before he created the thing for which he’s remembered,” Pillinger told his hometown newspaper, the Bristol Post, in 2012.

“If we’d turned around immediately and said we’ll give it another shot, we could have men on their way to Mars by now.” The Beagle 2 was a £50 million mission to establish whether there was, or had ever been, life on Mars but it was lost without trace on December 26, 2003.