A FRESH European attempt to land on Mars will be launched in 2011 under plans presented to the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday.

Scientists want to send one or more robots to touch down in June 2013, in a £340 million mission to investigate Martian geology and even biology.

Detailed proposals will be drawn up by the agency’s ruling council for consideration by European science ministers in December. If the mission is approved, researchers from participating states will compete to design and run instruments.

Britain is almost certain to take part and would probably contribute between 15 and 20 per cent of the overall budget — about £50 million to £70 million, similar to the total cost of the failed Beagle 2 lander. Most of this would be channelled back to British scientists and companies.

The programme was agreed this week by more than 100 scientists from the 15 states involved in the ESA at a conference at Aston University in Birmingham. There are three mission options. Under the ExoMars proposal, a large surface rover and an orbiter would survey the planet in tandem. An ExoMars-Lite scheme provides for the rover alone.

The third option, BeagleNet, would incorporate elements from Beagle 2 and the cancelled Netlander project, a French plan to deploy two landers, each with a fixed laboratory and a small rover.

The scheme chosen must have three key capabilities. The most important will be a life detection package similar to the one aboard Beagle 2 to test soil and atmosphere for signs of past or present biological activity.

The mission will also carry a drill that can reach a depth of 6.5ft and seismometers. The agency’s Mars Express orbiter recently detected methane in the Martian atmosphere.

Seismic tests would help to establish whether the source is volcanic or biological. Bruno Gardini, manager of the agency’s Aurora Mars exploration programme, said Europe now had a clear “road map” for a return to Mars.

Professor Jean-Pierre Swings, chairman of the exploration programme, said: “We will explore Mars in three dimensions, feeling below the surface for the first time, seeing on a microscopic and macroscopic scale, sniffing and tasting for the chemical signatures of life, and listening for a seismically active Mars.”

Mark Sims of the University of Leicester, who was Beagle 2’s mission manager and now chairs Britain’s Aurora advisory committee, said: “This is a great result for European planetary exploration with significant involvement for the UK.”

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, which will fund British involvement, has committed £4.5 million to the development of Aurora.

Mars Express and Nasa’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers have recently confirmed that water used to flow on the surface of the planet, which probably had the right conditions for life to develop.

The ESA mission would coincide with the arrival of Nasa’s twin Mars Science Laboratory rovers. The two space agencies are liaising over plans to ensure that research is not duplicated.

The ESA intends to launch another mission to Mars in 2016 to collect samples of rock, soil and air and bring them back to Earth. This is likely to be a joint effort with Nasa, along the lines of the current Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its largest moon, Titan.

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