The team of scientists behind the Beagle 2 Mars probe will keep searching for the lost spacecraft well into February after the latest attempt to contact it failed on Wednesday. The first fly-by of the Mars Express orbiter that carried the Beagle probe to the red planet failed to detect any signal from the Martian surface, to the great disappointment of all the British scientists involved in the project. At a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Colin Pillinger, professor of planetary science at the Open University and the driving force behind the Beagle project, said: "We will play until the final whistle. It only takes a fraction of a second to score a goal and we will not give up at this time."