Next year, a set of complex, temperamental and hugely expensive scientific instruments will be strapped to the top of a rocket and violently shaken as they are launched into space. Six months later, they will be hurled into the atmosphere of Mars at 14,000mph. Cushioned by balloons, they will bounce to the surface, roll to a stop and then switch themselves on without, it is hoped, a single glitch. The scientists behind the Beagle 2 project have spent the past few weeks making sure that those vibrations, knocks and shakes will not scupper their