Department of Earth Sciences

project term: Jan 01, 2020 — Nov 30, 2022

Mars Express is the first European mission to Mars. Since its arrival in 2003, the experiments aboard the spacecraft have provided important clues on surface geology and morphology, the subsurface, the atmosphere, the history of water and the question of life.
One experiment on the spacecraft is the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) which aims at global multispectral and three-dimensional coverage of the Martian surface with a resolution of up to 10 meters per pixel.

project term: Nov 01, 2015 — Aug 31, 2020

From 2007 until 2018 the US space probe Dawn was on its mission to explore the small bodies Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The NASA-mission aimed at investigating the formation and evolution of these bodies to find clues to the solar system’s early history. In July 2011 Dawn arrived at its first target, the asteroid Vesta. For one year, the probe collected scientific data of Vesta before going on a journey for two and a half years to its second mission object, the dwarf planet Ceres.

project term: Jul 01, 2015 — Dec 31, 2019

Journeys to planets and moons of the Outer Solar System always pose a great challenge to space-mission design and conduct. Within the framework of the Cassini-Huygens mission US and European space agencies jointly succeeded in sending a probe and a lander to the Saturnian system, over 1 billion kilometers away. From 2004 until 2017, instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft continuously collected scientific data. Thousands of stunning images have to be processed and interpreted now. Scientists of the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing Group were involved in the Cassini camera experiment, the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS).

project term: Jan 01, 2014 — Mar 31, 2017

The iMars project focuses on developing a user platform for Mars surface science, consisting of a consistent set of data products of Mars from the 1970s to the present day. The concept aims to generate a webGIS using imaging data from NASA and ESA missions; including specific tools for producing, exploring and analyzing data products for studies of surface changes over time.