At first glance they seem an odd couple - the professor of planetary sciences at the Open University who wants to send a space probe to Mars and the British artist who won the Turner Prize for a bisected cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde. But it turns out that Colin Pillinger and Damien Hirst have much in common. After unveiling the spot-paint calibration device created by Hirst that the probe Beagle 2 will carry to Mars, Pillinger confessed that he had been thrown out of art class in his second form. Hirst nodded in sympathy and said: "I was as well."