Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., professor and chair of earth and planetary sciences in Arts and Sciences, has been appointed to two new positions with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Mars Surveyor Program.
Arvidson's appointments put him and his staff in the thick of Mars exploration for the next seven years.
As an interdisciplinary scientist for the Mars Surveyor Program, Arvidson will provide guidance on data collection, dissemination and archiving from the entire Mars Surveyor Program. He also has been named a deputy principal investigator with the Athena science team for the Mars 2001 mission. Arvidson will work with Cornell University Professor Steve Squires, lead principal investigator of Athena, and other collaborating scientists on payload development and ground operations, as well as data gathering and archiving. The Athena science payload will be on the Mars 2001 mission rover, which will traverse up to 10 kilometers, make remote sensing and site measurements and collect rock and soil samples.
Arvidson and his group manage NASA's Planetary Data System Geosciences Node, housed on the fourth floor of McDonnell Hall. The facility has images and planetary data from missions to Mars, the Moon and Venus.
The entire Mars Surveyor Program is a suite of NASA missions running from 1997 to 2005. The new Mars missions began with the well-publicized and highly successful Mars Pathfinder in the summer of 1997. The robot Sojourner Truth captivated the world with its successful deployment on the Martian surface and its workmanlike approach to gathering data on surface rocks and soils --data that then were beamed back to Earth.
Arvidson's additional prominent roles add to two he already plays with the Mars Surveyor Program. He is an interdisciplinary scientist with the Mars Global Surveyor Mission in charge of data and archiving. That mission began in earnest last fall when the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter entered its orbit around Mars and began returning data.
For the past several years, Arvidson also has led a team of researchers, including Washington University earth and planetary scientists and undergraduate and graduate students, in field experiments in the Mojave Desert to test technologies NASA plans to use on future Mars rovers. The Mojave Desert field tests, involving testing a rover that is a derivative of Sojourner Truth, are expected to lay the groundwork for the Athena rover and other operations on the Martian surface for missions in 2001, '03 and '05.
The 2001 mission involves an orbiter, lander and rover. Plans are for the rover to traverse across Mars for an Earth year, traveling farther than any other rover and carrying a much larger payload.
"My role with the 2001 mission is to help out with payload development, but more importantly to ensure that we can do ground operations, carry out the mission and do data retrieval and archiving," said Arvidson, whose participation with NASA missions to Mars and Venus spans more than 25 years. "A key focus will be how we can develop this rover to do field geology for a year. Our involvement makes Washington University a cornerstone for NASA's Mars program."
Arvidson's staff will participate in data collection and archiving as well as more field experiments in the Mojave Desert. The staff includes Edward Guinness, Ph.D., senior research scientist in earth and planetary sciences; Susan Slavney, systems programmer analyst; and Thomas Stein, computer systems coordinator. Earth and planetary sciences graduate students Curt Niebur and Rebecca Eby also will play roles in the 2001 mission, and Arvidson said an additional staff member will join the group at a later date to help with the Mars Surveyor Program duties.
Most recently, Arvidson was science coordinator for the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory payload and mission control for Steve Fossett's year-end quest to fly around the world in a balloon. Arvidson's staff played major roles in those endeavors as well.
His Mars work began in 1970, when he worked as a graduate student with the late Tim Mutch of Brown University, the leader of the imaging team of the Viking Lander missions to Mars (1975-76).
"I've always expected to be working on the Mars missions, but I never thought it would take from the 1970s to the end of the century to get where we are now," Arvidson said. "Our involvement is a big plus for our students, who will have access to the details of mission planning, data sets and the processes of mission implementation. They will also experience the excitement of doing planetary science."
-- Tony Fitzpatrick
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