Abstract:
We live during an absolutely extraordinary period in the history of the discovery and exploration of our solar system. Indeed, since the first artificial satellite was launched in 1957, men did not stop sending missions into space to learn more about our environment and to quench our thirst of exploration and discovery. In particular for Europe, the sending of a probe towards Mars on June 2nd, 2003 (first European mission to Mars), one towards the Moon on September 27th, 2003 (first European mission to the Moon), and then a very ambitious mission to a comet nucleus on March 2nd, 2004, illustrate this period of excitement.
The presentation will show the challenging development of the imaging systems which are part of these missions. In addition, several missions are in preparation such as Marco-Polo, a sample-return mission to an asteroid, and the ExoMars mission which is dedicated to the search for past or present life on Mars. Imaging systems will play a key role and are the tools of this in-situ exploration, and the Close-up Imager part of the science payload of these two missions will be described. Note that unpublished pictures of the Moon will be shown as well as animations of future missions.
Speaker Bio:
Jean-Luc Josset is the director of the Space Exploration Institute based in Neuchatel, Switzerland. After an academic education at the University Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI, DEA Astronomy and a PhD in Physics, he joined the Space Science department of the European Space Agency (ESA). Involved in several space missions since the Phobos mission in 1985, he was the principal investigator of the camera AMIE on board the first European mission to the Moon SMART-1 and a member of the science study team of Marco-Polo for ESA, a new mission for sample return from asteroid. Dr. Josset is active in research activities with international collaborations in Exo-Astrobiology and he is principal investigator of the close-up camera of the new ExoMars mission for the search for past or present life on the surface of Mars.