Prof. Colin Pilger has died aged 70.

I never met him, though greatly enjoyed hearing him talk about Mars and space exploration.

I was lucky once to get into the press launch of an exhibition of the Beagle 2 lander at the White Cube, then in Hoxton. The colour calibration chart on the probe was a dot painting by Damien Hirst.

The Beagle 2 was a ‘cheap’ mars mission. It was piggy backing on a nasa mission to mars and support from the project was generated by Colin’s ability to get the likes of Hirst involved, as well as Blur composing the call sign.

I was working at the BBC and a colleague passed on the invitation, though I went totally in my own capacity, armed with a then state of the art Nokia camera phone.

Science and space exploration will miss him.