If all goes according to plan, a Soyuz-Fregat booster rocket will lift off from Baikonur cosmodrome next month carrying an extremely compact and sophisticated life detection probe that might finally settle one of the most intriguing questions in science: did Mars once harbor microbial life?and is it still there?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/may03/mars.html
