With their maverick, DIY appeal, they have gadded around in spacesuits in a US desert and in the Arctic and now, thanks to British help, they will have a mock spaceship in Europe. Welcome to the slightly surreal world of the privately funded Mars Society, which originated in the US in 1998 and now has some 6,000 members in 50 countries with one unifying passion: establishing a human presence on Mars. Today the organisation took another small step towards its Mars dream when its British division announced that a third research station, Euro-Mars, will open next summer in Iceland at a cost of