Back then many of us gathered with Beagle's mastermind, Prof Colin Pillinger, to wait to hear the first signal that the spacecraft had touched down safely.

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But, observes Colin Pillinger of the Open University, a British member of the Flying Stones team, the experiment will cost almost nothing to carry out, so it is worth a try in any case.

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But Prof Colin Pillinger, the scientist behind the ill-fated Beagle-2 mission to Mars, said the printer would have to be really precise to be able to fabricate complex parts that usually make up the body of a spacecraft.

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