Mars group > About us

The Mars group at the Niels Bohr Institute

We are an experimental group, and the centre of our activities is our experiments on various Mars landers and rovers.

Research

Our research is centred on investigations of the mineral composition of the dust, soil and rocks on Mars by magnetic experiments on Mars landers and rovers. The main goal is to understand the geological evolution of Mars, especially the history of water, since water is necessary for the evolution and survival of life as we know it.

Right now...

At the moment, we are participating in the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, on which we have two magnetic experiments. Phoenix landed near the Martian North Pole on May 25th 2008, and for the following three months most of our group will stay at the Science Operations Centre in Tucson, Arizona, to participate in the interpretation of data from the lander. Phoenix is a NASA mission lead by the University of Arizona with several contributions from around the world.

Previous missions

We also had magnetic properties experiments on the NASA missions Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rovers, and we are currently involved in the development of a magnetometer for the ESA mission ExoMars.