The My cast away this week is Professor Colin Pilinger, a world-class planetary scientist,

his daring mission to search for life on Mars with Beagle

2, catapulted him to public prominence. In case you're wondering, yes, he is the man from Bristol

with the mutton- shop sideburns.

Unearthing the mysteries of the red planet is, however, only half his story.

His first job was for NASA for the Apollo 11 space mission.

These days, he's professor of planetary science at the Open University

and is also on the brink of introducing a revolutionary technique for the early detection of TB.

Of his passion for opening science up to the man in the street, he says,

I'm not aiming at the next Stephen Hawking. I'm aiming for the kid who sits at the back of the class. That's

the sort of kid I was. So Colin

Pilinger it was early Christmas morning 2003 you must have felt like a kid

again yourself wound up waiting for maybe the biggest and best gift of all,

but it was a gift that never came.

There was an all-night vigil. We sat in a room waiting for the signal from Nata.

So it was on a live telephone to a control center in California and a voice came on and said I'm sorry there's no

data for you. And this was no data from Beagle II that was supposed to be

sending out the signal to say I'm here I've landed.

Sorry we have no data for you which was supposed to be the data that was said you

know we've got here and everything's okay. A heart-sinking moment. But I still had to, I had to encourage all the people

in the room who were just as wound up as me because so many people had put so much effort into this. I had to be the

one that sort of said, don't worry guys who this is not the end of the world.

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