Once again this past week we’ve been busy scanning across the internet to find the latest information and Open University courses. The greatest university on the planet (we reckon anyway) is always innovating and leading the way on many issues that affect us around the globe and these news pieces reflect just that. So if there’s a free course or bit of news on the agenda then hopefully we will pick it up and stick it on the next Open University news.

Mars images show the planet’s surface in 5 TIMES more detail than ever before. Beagle 2 was an unsuccessful British landing spacecraft that formed part of the European Space Agency’s 2003 Mars Express mission. It was conceived by a group of British academics headed by Professor Colin Pillinger at the Open University, in collaboration with the University of Leicester. The probe’s purpose was to search for signs of life on Mars, past or present. A landing site on the red planet in Isidis Panitia – a basin – was chosen. The Beagle 2 mission call-sign was composed by Blur and the ‘test card’ intended to calibrate its cameras and spectrometers was painted by Damien Hirst.

More Mars pics available showing stunning changes

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