...and are quick on the draw

For some, there can never be enough champagne. Colin Pillinger, the brains behind the Beagle 2 mission and owner of the most impressive sideburns in academia, and Nick Newman, the cartoonist whose work appears in The Times Higher , both attended the launch of London's Cartoon Gallery before the awards party. Professor Pillinger is a longtime collector of cartoons featuring Mars. But one has eluded him - by Mr Newman. It appeared in The Times Higher in 1986 and shows a conjunction of Mars and Jupiter.

Newman no longer had the original, but he whipped out a pen and redrew it off the cuff. Now Professor Pillinger's collection, which is to go on show at the Cartoon Gallery, is complete. If only space exploration were so simple.

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