Tributes are pouring in following the death of Colin Pillinger, a British planetary scientist who spearheaded a United Kingdom attempt to put a spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

Pillinger suffered a brain hemorrhage at his Cambridge home and was taken to a local hospital where he died with regaining consciousness, his family said, issuing a statement calling his death "devastating and unbelievable."

Pillinger was most well known for his extensive championing of the British Beagle 2 project, an ultimately unsuccessful 2003 attempt to land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars to search for life on the Red Planet.

The $50-million spacecraft, funded largely by private donations, was named to honor the ship that took Charles Darwin on his voyage that led to his formulation of the theory of evolution.

Carried to Mars by a European Space Agency orbiter, Beagle 2 disappeared without a trace after separating for an attempted landing.

An investigation came to the conclusion it likely had burned upon entering the Mars atmosphere.

Although it was a failure, it was "a heroic failure," the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees said.

After words on Pillinger's death spread, his friends and colleagues were quick to praise his scientific enthusiasm and curiosity.

"His vision of space exploration and his dedication to it inspired the nation," U.K. Science Minister David Willetts said, characterizing Pillinger as a "delightful man and a free spirit."

The often-unconventional Pillinger was well aware of the value of showmanship to sell the idea of important space efforts to the public.

He once demonstrated the compact size of the Beagle 2 spacecraft by putting a replica of it in a supermarket cart and wheeling it through a university parking lot.

A video of the event was widely featured on British news broadcasts.

Pillinger, who held a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wales, began his scientific career working for NASA, performing analysis on moon rock samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo program.

He served as the head of the Department of Physical Sciences at the Open University until 2005.

Among his many honors, Pillinger had an asteroid detected in 2000 named after him.