 A MID Wales robot is on schedule to land on Mars on Christmas Day. Beagle 2 has just entered the latest stage in its mission to find traces of life on the red planet and the brains or "smart" software for the robot's arm has been created by six experts from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA), who have spent five years working on the project. Made of titanium and carbon fibre, the arm will collect samples and is crucial to the success of the Beagle 2 mission. Weighing just 2.4kg with a reach of one metre, its success depends on the work of the Space Robotics Group at the Department of Computer Science at UWA, who will next week be based at the National Space Centre in Leicester for the rest of the mission. Led by Dr Dave Barnes (pictured above), the team has built a simulated computer model of Beagle 2, which is the brainchild of Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, and Dr Mark Sims of the University of Leicester's Space Research Centre. Yesterday Dr Barnes said: "We are very busy working on the simulated arm. We've been doing some complicated tests which will hopefully work when Beagle 2 lands on the surface of Mars. | 
