New funding for Martian science
Applications were welcomed in the areas of:
- Exploitation of data arising from NASA’s MSL mission
- Underpinning science in pursuit of the aims of the ExoMars mission
- Positioning the UK for PI roles in future planetary missions
Bids of an excellent standard were received from a range of scientific disciplines, highlighting the diverse, vibrant nature of the UK’s internationally recognised planetary science community.
Supporting this community will allow for more effective exploitation of the European Space Agency’s Aurora and Science programmes http://exploration.esa.int/ within the UK, helping maintain our world-class science base – a key driver for innovation and economic growth. The first mission in the Aurora programme, ExoMars, will search for traces of past and present life, characterise the biological environment of Mars and improve knowledge of the Martian environment and geophysics.
Dr Chris Castelli, Acting Director of Technology Science and Exploration at the UK Space Agency said: “This is great news for British science. The Agency is delighted to support such innovative research. These awards will produce new knowledge that will help inform future exploration missions and ensure that UK scientists remain at the forefront of space exploration.”
Dr Vernon Phoenix and Dr Richard Court of the University of Glasgow and Imperial College London respectively will receive awards to further the study of preservation and detection of organics on Mars. Answering these questions will generate key information to aid interpretation of data generated by both ExoMars 2018 and NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.
Dr Richard Court said: “My fellowship seeks to understand the processes operating in the Martian subsurface capable of altering organic matter. I want to determine the forms in which organic matter was deposited four billion years ago, when Mars was a warmer, wetter, more habitable planet. This could reveal the organic compounds future life-detection missions should be searching for, and where they should be searching to maximise their chances of finding organic matter and evidence of past life on Mars.”
Professor Peter Read from the University of Oxford and Dr Ian Hutchinson from the University of Leicester also received awards to support their work. Professor Read said: “The studentship aims to extend Oxford's recent efforts to combine measurements of atmospheric temperature, dust and water from instruments in orbit around Mars, with numerical climate model simulations to obtain a detailed reconstruction of the Martian weather and climate.”
Dr Ian Hutchinson was awarded funding for the Raman RLS; to ensure that the data and scientific results emerging from the NASA MSL mission are used to inform and optimise the operation of the instruments on ExoMars. It will also put UK researchers in a good position to exploit data from the mission.
The Aurora Science review panel membership was as follows: Dr Caroline Smith (Natural History Museum), Professor Alan Fitzsimmons (Queens University Belfast), Professor Matthew Genge (Imperial College London), Professor Liane Benning (University of Leeds) and was chaired by Professor Fredric Taylor (University of Oxford).
Details of the successful proposals are as follows:
Professor Martin Lee
University of Glasgow
Atmosphere-crust coupling and carbon sequestration on the young Mars
£105,639
Dr Richard Court
Imperial College London
Preservation and detection of organic matter in the Martian subsurface
£289,050
Professor Peter Read
University of Oxford
Studies of the Martian atmospheric boundary layer and global circulation from combined use of spacecraft data and numerical circulation models
£65,411
Dr Vernon Phoenix
University of Glasgow
Preservation and detection of molecular signatures of life under cold, high-solar-flux, liquid-water-unstable conditions.
£111,027
Dr Joseph Michalski
Natural History Museum
The mineralogy and geologic setting of clays on Mars
£262,254
Dr Ian Hutchinson
University of Leicester
Preparations for Raman RLS on Exomars
£69,997
