NEWS TIP SHEET
Note to Editors: Jakosky will be at Cape Kennedy, Fla., from April 4 to April 8, but will be checking his Boulder campus voice mail regularly.
CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Bruce Jakosky, an internationally known Mars expert, is a co-investigator for NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey Mission now slated for lift-off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on Saturday, April 7.
Jakosky, who also heads up CU-Boulder's Center for Astrobiology, is a co-investigator on the thermal emission imaging system, or THEMIS. The instrument will map the planet in both visible and infrared light at very high resolutions to search for sites that may have, or once contained, water.
"We will be analyzing data here at CU-Boulder pertaining to the physical properties of the surface and to the geochemical composition of the surface and the relevance for life," he said. Jakosky also is a research associate at CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and a co-investigator on the Mars Global Surveyor now orbiting the Red Planet.
Designed and built by scientists at Arizona State University, THEMIS will be used to detect surface minerals by the heat they radiate, especially minerals known to form in the presence of water. Jakosky has spent much of his career studying the history of water on Mars and the possibility of primitive life that may have evolved there.
The Odyssey spacecraft was built by Lockheed-Martin Astronautics of Denver and will be launched aboard a Delta rocket. The one-way trip of 286 million miles should take six months, putting the spacecraft in Martian orbit in October. The spacecraft is expected to gather data for 2.5 years.
For more information contact Jakosky at (303) 492-8004 or Jim Scott in the CU-Boulder News Office at (303) 492-3114.