Mars Express will release the lander once in orbit

The National Space Centre in Leicester is to become mission control for Britain's Mars robot, Beagle 2.

A control centre is being set up to manage communications with the lander, once it arrives at Mars.

Beagle 2 is part of Europe's first solo mission to the Red Planet.

It is hitching a ride on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft, due to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in June.

The spacecraft should take about seven months to travel the 100 million-kilometre-journey to Mars.

Beagle 2 will be dropped on to the Martian surface where it will use a suite of scientific instruments to investigate the rocks where it lands.

Public access

Some of the controls will be carried out by scientists and engineers in the Lander Operations Control Centre at the National Space Centre.

Beagle 2 will collect Martian rock samples

They will calibrate a ground test model of the probe before sending commands to the real thing via the main spacecraft, Mars Express.

The Beagle 2 project is being led from the Open University by Professor Colin Pillinger in partnership with the University of Leicester and Astrium UK.

Professor Alan Wells, Director of Space Research at both the University of Leicester and National Space Centre, said: "The University of Leicester has been sending scientific instruments into space for over 30 years and controlling our spacecraft from Earth.

"The idea to operate a space mission in full view of the visiting public to the National Space Centre is something that Colin Pillinger and I have been planning for, ever since Beagle 2 was conceived.

"Nasa (the US space agency) has never done this. We are breaking new ground in the public presentation of space science."

A preview exhibition of the Beagle 2 mission opens at the centre on 23 May.