UC Davis experts: Mars exploration

The following UC Davis faculty are available to comment on issues related to Mars exploration missions. For more information on the NASA Mars missions, see the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web site. For UC Davis sources on similar subjects not found here, contact Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533, ahfell@ucdavis.edu.

Search for life on Mars

Dawn Sumner, professor of geology at UC Davis, studies how traces of some of the earliest life on Earth differ from physical or chemical rock features that might be mistaken for fossils. Similar methods could be used to determine whether life has ever been present on Mars. Sumner has worked with the NASA Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and serves on the NASA committee revising goals and priorities for Mars exploration. Her role on this committee, in cooperation with Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institute, is to re-evaluate the goal of "Search for Life on Mars." She is also developing techniques for probing the structure of rock samples with the neutron imaging facilities at UC Davis' McClellan Nuclear Radiation Center. If Martian rocks were brought back to Earth, these methods might be used to study samples for traces of life without removing them from airtight containment. Contact: Dawn Sumner, Geology, (530) 752-5353, sumner@geology.ucdavis.edu.

Robots and space exploration

Sanjay Joshi, assistant professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis, studies autonomous robots and control systems for space missions and can comment on these issues related to Mars rovers. Future vehicles for exploring Mars, Titan or other planets and moons will have to be autonomous as they cannot reasonably be remote-controlled from Earth as missions become more complex, he said. These autonomous robots can carry out repetitive tasks, learn new tasks and fix their own breakdowns and other problems. Systems where multiple robots cooperate on tasks are a focus of research in his laboratory. In the future, such systems could be used to establish Mars outposts supporting both robotic and manned exploration. Before joining UC Davis in 2001, Joshi was at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on projects including the Mars Robotics Program and the Deep Space 1 space probe, launched in 1998. Contact: Sanjay Joshi, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, (530) 754-9662, maejoshi@ucdavis.edu.

• Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533, ahfell@ucdavis.edu

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