Imperial professors get funding from UK Space Agency to study Mars

Investigating the history of Martian rocks and soil and looking for signs of past or present life in rocks from the red planet, are two areas of research at Imperial College London that have received funding this month from the UK Space Agency.

Professors Sanjeev Gupta and Mark Sephton, both from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, have received combined funding of more than £400,000 from the UK Space Agency to help them carry out vital research for future missions to Mars.

Professor Gupta is a Participating Scientist in NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, which is due to land on the red planet on 6th August 2012. The mission aims to collect vital data about ancient environments on Mars and their viability for harbouring life, together with information about Mars’s past climates. Professor Gupta will be part of an international team that will analyse the geology and chemical composition of rocks in Gale Crater where the mission will land.

Gale Crater is 150 km wide with a mountain in its centre that stands nearly three times higher than the Grand Canyon is deep. It has some of the thickest exposed sections of layered sedimentary rocks in the solar system. The rock record in those layers holds stories that are billions of years old. They may indicate if and for how long Mars might have been habitable.

Professor Sephton has received funding to carry out preliminary research for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Mission, which is due to touch down on Mars in 2018. Professor Sephton and his colleagues will carry out a mock mission in the lab at Imperial, mimicking the conditions around the crater to test the “Life Marker Chip” (LMC), which will be used to detect signs of past or present life in rocks on Mars. The mock mission involves using the same procedures that will be used to operate the LMC to analyse the rocks from Earth that are similar to those around the landing site. They will evaluate the LMC’s effectiveness in finding molecules that indicate the presence of life and they will also be on the lookout for any potential problems in analysing the data, so that risks to the real mission can be minimised.

Professor Jan Cilliers, Head of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, says: “Imperial has been at the frontier of space research for many decades, with leading research on meteorites, asteroids and comet dust. It is great to see Mark and Sanjeev involved in these two significant missions to Mars, which will teach us more about its climate and its potential for harbouring life.”