Guinevere One

Guinevere One was a space probe sent from Great Britain to explore Mars in 2006 in order to look for signs of alien life. It contained water, wheat seeds, A+ human blood, and recordings of whale song, bird song, music, and spoken greetings in 120 languages.

Matthew Nicolson helped program the probe. On Christmas Eve 2006, it was intercepted by a Sycorax spaceship, and therefore never reached its destination. Among other articles, it contained a sample of A+ blood on board which the Sycorax exploited, using blood control. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, PROSE: The Christmas Invasion)

Behind the scenes

 * Part of the inspiration for Guinevere One came from the failed real world British probe, which would have landed on Mars in December 2003. However, the probe itself is a virtual copy of the NASA Magellan Mission to Venus.
 * The probe is described as Britain's first mission to Mars. This contradicts the events of TV: The Ambassadors of Death, which referred to a manned British mission to Mars during the UNIT era.
 * BBC Wales Graphics spelled the probe's name in different ways throughout the episode. On some screens, it appears as "Guinivere One," much to the chagrin of Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner in the in-vision commentary to The Christmas Invasion on the series 2 DVD boxset.
 * In Russell T Davies' 2019 show , a news headline mentions the "Guinevere Probe in major alert".