News Story

3D maps of ozone and dust on Mars

Monday 8 Mar 2021

A new research grant will make it possible to create maps of ozone and dust found on Mars as part of the ExoMars mission.

The mission involved the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) which launched on 14 March 2016 to explore if methane gas exists in the atmosphere and below the surface. Now, almost five years later, a team led by Dr Manish Patel, Senior Lecturer in the School of Physical Sciences has had several of the instrument findings published from the OU co-led Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) instrument on the TGO.

As a result, Dr Patel has received a further £378,000 funding from the UK Space Agency for the Retrievals of Martian aerosols and ozone from ExoMars NOMAD data project to continue to create maps of the ozone and dust found so far by NOMAD on the TGO which began transmitting data on the atmosphere in April 2018.

The full story can be found here http://www.open.ac.uk/research/news/3d-maps-ozone-and-dust-mars