DECIPHERING THE WINDS ON MARS
What work are you involved in for the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos’ ExoMars mission?
Well there’s a UK Space Agency grant which is to look at what we call ‘aeolian processes’. Aeolian is basically [a term used to describe] anything to do with the wind, and how the wind affects the surface. We're looking at sand ripples, wind erosion and how the surface has been eroded or modified by the wind. And we’re going to be doing that through my membership of the PanCam camera instrument, which is the eyes of the [Rosalind Franklin] rover.
There have also been a couple of previous UK Space Agency grants, where we were heavily involved in the new landing site selection process, so my involvement with ExoMars really goes back to 2014, where we started to propose landing sites.
Why was Oxia Planum chosen as a suitable location for landing?
It was a combination of things. Oxia Planum is interesting because it’s really old, and it’s in the right place, because the mission has certain constraints. For example, it can't land anywhere that has too high an elevation, because it needs a certain thickness of atmosphere for the parachutes to work. You can't land at the top of a mountain, because you'll be going too fast when you hit the surface. Oxia
