In January it was announced that images from spacecraft orbiting Mars had probably located signs of Beagle 2, the unfortunate UK mission to the red planet which went missing back in 2003. This month I chatted to LCOGT’s Edward Gomez, who has been following proceedings, about what this means – including that the UK now holds the record for Europe’s first soft landing on another planet!

But current and future missions have also been in the news. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is rapidly approaching Ceres, and New Horizons will whizz past Pluto in the Summer. Unprecedented close-ups of these two dwarf planets should tell us much more about how our Solar System formed. Not forgetting, of course, Rosetta and the Philae lander, which are investigating coemt 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Originally broadcast (in edited form) on 29th January 2015 as part of Pythagoras’ Trousers on Radio Cardiff.