Related Research Articles
Mars Pathfinder was an American robotic spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight, 10.6 kg (23 lb) wheeled robotic Mars rover named Sojourner, the first rover to operate outside the Earth–Moon system.
The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. The cost of each mission is capped at a lower level than missions from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal rather than serving a general purpose.
Phoenix was an uncrewed space probe that landed on the surface of Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated until November 2, 2008. Phoenix was operational on Mars for 157 sols. Its instruments were used to assess the local habitability and to research the history of water on Mars. The mission was part of the Mars Scout Program; its total cost was $420 million, including the cost of launch.
An alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) is a spectrometer that analyses the chemical element composition of a sample from scattered alpha particles and fluorescent X-rays after a sample is irradiated with alpha particles and X-rays from radioactive sources. This method of analysing the elemental composition of a sample is most often used on space missions, which require low weight, small size, and minimal power consumption. Other methods are faster, and do not require the use of radioactive materials, but require larger equipment with greater power requirements. A variation is the alpha proton X-ray spectrometer, such as on the Pathfinder mission, which also detects protons.
Wesley T. Huntress, Jr. is an American space scientist. An astrochemist and space scientist, Huntress worked for about twenty years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the 1980s, he was also a video game designer, producing games for Apple computers. In 1988, Huntress moved to NASA headquarters, where he would serve in several positions, including Director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division and Associate Administrator for Space Science.
Harry "Hap" Y. McSween Jr. is Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Planetary Geoscience at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has published papers and popular books about meteorites and planetary exploration, and textbooks on geochemistry and cosmochemistry.
James F. Bell III is a professor of Astronomy at Arizona State University, specializing in the study of planetary geology, geochemistry and mineralogy using data obtained from telescopes and from various spacecraft missions. Bell's active research has involved the NASA Mars Pathfinder, Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR), Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR), 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Mars Science Laboratory missions. His book Postcards from Mars includes many images taken by the Mars rovers. Bell is currently an editor of the space science journal Icarus and president of The Planetary Society. He has served as the lead scientist in charge of the Panoramic camera (Pancam) color imaging system on Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
Peter H. Smith is a professor emeritus at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, where he holds the inaugural Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science. He is also the principal investigator for the $420 million robotic explorer Phoenix which landed at the north pole of the planet Mars on May 25, 2008. Peter H. Smith's papers are held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.
Heimdal is a relatively recent impact crater on the planet Mars. It is a simple crater which lies in Vastitas Borealis, the northern plain. It is named after the Norwegian town of Heimdal.
To date, interplanetary spacecraft have provided abundant evidence of water on Mars, dating back to the Mariner 9 mission, which arrived at Mars in 1971. This article provides a mission by mission breakdown of the discoveries they have made. For a more comprehensive description of evidence for water on Mars today, and the history of water on that planet, see Water on Mars.
The robotic Sojourner rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. Sojourner was operational on Mars for 92 sols, and was the first wheeled vehicle to operate on an astronomical object other than the Earth or Moon. The landing site was in the Ares Vallis channel in the Chryse Planitia region of the Oxia Palus quadrangle.
Meenakshi Wadhwa is a planetary scientist and educator who studies the formation and evolution of the Solar System through the analysis of planetary materials including meteorites, Moon rocks and other extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft missions. She is director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.
James W. Head III is the Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University. He studies the roles of volcanism in planetary crusts as well as the geological evolution of Mars, and has served as the investigator on many major international planetary investigation missions.
David A. Spencer is the Mars Sample Return Campaign Mission Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As an aerospace engineer, Spencer designs and operates planetary spacecraft.
Sol is a solar day on Mars; that is, a Mars-day. A sol is the apparent interval between two successive returns of the Sun to the same meridian as seen by an observer on Mars. It is one of several units for timekeeping on Mars.
Roger Jay Phillips was an American geophysicist, planetary scientist, and professor emeritus at the Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests included the geophysical structure of planets, and the use of radar and gravity to investigate the surfaces and interiors of the planets.
Bethany List Ehlmann is an American geologist and a professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. A leading researcher in planetary geology, Ehlmann is also the President of The Planetary Society, Director of the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and a Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Sarah Stewart Johnson is an American biologist, geochemist, astronomer and planetary scientist. She joined Georgetown University in 2014 and is currently the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Biology and the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program in the School of Foreign Service.
John T. Clarke is a professor of astronomy and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University. Clarke is best known for his Hubble Space Telescope observations of the aurora on Jupiter and Saturn, as well as over 260 papers in refereed journals, including every planet except Mercury and the interplanetary medium. Clarke's research is focussed on vacuum ultraviolet instrumentation and observations of planetary atmospheres. At present this includes primarily observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, overseeing the echelle channel on the MAVEN IUVS instrument orbiting Mars, and as Deputy-PI for the upcoming GLIDE mission to image the Earth's geocorona.
Nicolas Dauphas is a planetary scientist and isotope geochemist. He is a professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences and Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. Within cosmochemistry, his research focus is on isotope geochemistry. He studies the origin and evolution of planets and other objects in the solar system by analyzing the natural distributions of elements and their isotopes using mass spectrometers.
References
- 1 2 Peterson, Deb (2010-12-12). "Rocket science is a blast for Mars investigator Ray Arvidson". St. Louis Post-Dispatch . Archived from the original on 2017-06-05. Retrieved 2021-08-23.
EDUCATION • Williamstown, N.J., high school, 1965
- ↑ "Physics Tree - Raymond E. Arvidson Family Tree". academictree.org. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ Fitzpatrick, Tony (1998-10-01). "Arvidson named McDonnell Professor". The Record. Washington University in St. Louis.
- ↑ "Raymond Arvidson". The Source. Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ "107: Dr. Ray Arvidson: Amazing Stories of Opportunity and Curiosity from a Researcher in Planetary Science". People Behind the Science Podcast. 2014-07-22. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ "Raymond Arvidson - SAS". www.s-a-s.org. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ "Small-Body Database Lookup". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-04.
- ↑ "Phoenix Mars Mission - Mission - Teams - Ray Arvidson". phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu. Archived from the original on 2021-08-17. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ Malkowicz, Tom; Lutz, Diana (2015-05-26). "Their classroom is the desert". The Source. Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
- ↑ "Hewlett/Pathfinder Alumni". wufs.wustl.edu. Archived from the original on 2021-08-17. Retrieved 2021-08-17.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
