Anyone who has taken a walk through Kingswood Park may have noticed an unusual sign pointing the way to Mars. Below the sign is the name Colin Pillinger, a professor of planetary science and Mars explorer, who was born and brought up in Kingswood.
Professor Pillinger, who was always fascinated with the red planet, was known as the brains behind the famous British Beagle 2 Lander which set off on June 2, 2003, on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express. The 20th anniversary of the launch was marked in the recent Journey to Mars Exhibition held at Aerospace Bristol.
On Christmas Day in 2003, Beagle 2 separated from the main spacecraft, entered Mars’ atmosphere with the automatic landing sequence starting. It was due to take eight minutes to land on the surface and send back a radio signal.
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But nothing was heard from Beagle 2. Professor Pillinger passed away suddenly in 2014 when he was 70 years old and just a few months later, a NASA spacecraft spotted Beagle 2 on Mars surface - a mere five kilometres from where it had been planned to land.
His sister, Doreen Lundegaard, who still lives in Kingswood, said this week that it “was a tragedy” that her brother had died before he could know the Beagle had landed. She said Kingswood Park was where she was sent while her baby brother, Colin was being born.
She said: “I was six years old when Colin was born. I was not told what was going on and was sent with a bottle of water and a box of sandwiches to go to the park with my cousin.
“It went for hours before we went home and there he was. They said here’s your little brother and I kissed him on the cheek,” she said. Doreen said the reason her brother went on to study space was because of the radio serial 'Journey Into Space'.
She said: “Colin became obsessed with it. It was about going to the Moon and then Mars, it was great stuff, all the kids played martians and spacemen.”
Educated at Kingswood Grammar, Colin Pillinger completed a BsC and PhD in chemistry at the University College of Swansea, where he reportedly described himself as “a disaster as a science student”, although Doreen said: “He was always very clever.”
He took a research post at Bristol University where he received sample of moon rock brought back by Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Doreen said he was 26 years old when he carried the moon rocks home in his briefcase, described by the press at that time as being “battered” even though it was actually relatively new.
He was a Professor of Planetary Science at the Open University in Milton Keynes when he saw an announcement that the European Space Agency was sending a spacecraft to orbit Mars in 2003. Doreen said: “He wanted to put a lander on Mars and he fought a lot to get it done. He was quite a hustler and had to scrounge around for funding which they got in the end.”
When the Beagle 2 failed to send back a radio signal, Doreen said her brother had an attitude of “what will be, will be.” He moved into studying meteorites, including some from Mars, she said.
While the sign in Kingswood Park was erected as a memorial to him, the legacy he left when it came to space science was also marked by an asteroid ‘15614 Pillinger’ named after him, as well as part of a crater rim on Mars.
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