Mission
to Mars
You've seen the movie - now join in the science!
The atmosphere of Mars is completely different from that of Earth, but from a cosmological point of view the differences between the two planets are hardly worth discussing. This leads to two very significant questions: First, why are they different? Second, how did they get that way? One of the things we need to do in order to understand the atmospheres and climates of the two planets is to build conceptual and numerical models of these atmospheres, and in order to do that right we need some measurements to compare the models to.
We have been working on instrument concepts for measuring the atmosphere of Mars for several years and this year we have been successful in getting to the second round (four remaining proposals) for selection for a mission to launch in 2007. The final selection will happen sometime this summer. You can find more details of our proposal at http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/MICA There you can learn why one of our ambitions is to take pictures of Martian clouds at sunset!
We are looking for a student with a physics and/or astronomy background with an enthusiasm for planetary studies to join us for the summer. The student will help us as we begin to refine our concepts for instruments and the science behind the instruments.
The selected student will work with the University of Toronto team on the development of the project. Several Canadian companies are working with us on this proposal and there will be some opportunity to interact with these industrial contacts.
This project would be suitable for an enthusiastic student at any stage. Primary skills will be the ability to work with library material, some ability at computer programming (we can teach you if necessary) and an enthusiasm for synthesising a coherent scientific picture from various sources of data.
Funding for this program comes from the Canadian Space Agency and CRESTech. In addition, Prof. Drummond holds an Industrial Research Chair with COMDEV and ABB BOMEM as the industrial sponsors, with additional support from the Canadian Space Agency, the Meteorological Service of Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
For more information, please contact Prof. James R. Drummond