Mars work is truly off the planet

Little green men - or indeed any other extraterrestrial art connoisseurs travelling in the Milky Way - will soon have the chance to appreciate Cool Britannia first hand.

Damien Hirst, the ageing enfant terrible of BritArt, has unveiled his latest work - a palette of coloured spots designed to fly on board the first British space probe to go to Mars.

The spot painting is designed to help scientists accurately adjust their instruments, but it also represents an unusual fusion of art and science which is meant, quite literally, to be out of this world.

It is the first artwork destined to land on another planet and is designed to fulfil a critically important task that could help scientists answer the ultimate question: whether we are alone in the universe.

The painting will be fixed to the frame of Beagle 2, a probe scheduled to land on Mars next year, to provide a colour chart for the calibration of the probe's spectrometers - instruments designed to search for signs of microbial life.

Hirst revealed his Martian work at the White Cube gallery in East London. "I'm sure there will be a great demand for my work out there [in space] - they'll love me," he said.

Hirst had to choose the colours from a carefully selected array of pigments designed to match the minerals and other compounds that might be present on Mars.

Measuring less than 8cm square and weighing 26.5g, the painting's colours are suspended in a type of clear adhesive which has been specially "space qualified" to withstand the vacuum and extreme temperatures of space travel.

Although the human eye sees the painting only in terms of colours, the spectrometers detect other characteristics, such as the chemical signatures of the minerals which make up the pigments. This allows scientists to determine whether Mars' redness is due to rust.

Hirst was given a selection of pigments known as the Mars Colours, which are formed from a mixture of red and yellow ochres, naturally occurring iron-containing minerals that have been used as colouring agents for many centuries.

Nine Mars Colours make up the "calibration target" that can be matched against the Martian landscape. The other colours are a white spot made of titanium oxide, a green pigment called Green Earth, and a deep blue made of azurite, a copper carbonate mineral.

Colin Pillinger, a space scientist and the driving force behind Beagle 2, said although Hirst was given a specification, he had a free hand on the final choice of design, layout and colours.

"I am not sure people thought we would deliver this target painting. It has been a pleasure working with Damien and to show artists and scientists can collaborate."

- INDEPENDENT