by Jessica McCann

Throughout the ages, men and women have gazed into the night skies and marveled. Is there life out there? And what would it be like to explore far away worlds?

In the nineteenth century, the genius and talent of writers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne fueled imaginations with fictional works like The War of the Worlds and From the Earth to the Moon. Today, the genius and talent of ASU scientists like Ronald Greeley, Philip Christensen, Jack Farmer and Laurie Leshin are feeding imaginations with the real thing, through their education, research and exploration of the planet Mars.

While you won’t find a listing for “Martian Geology” in U.S. News & World Report’s annual university rankings, ask anyone in the know and you’ll learn that ASU is home to one of the best Mars programs in the world. Arguably, all paths to Mars pass through ASU.

“There are very few centers of overwhelming excellence in our Mars research community, and, over the last couple of decades, ASU has evolved into one of them,” said Jim Garvin, the lead scientist for Mars exploration at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

ASU is involved in at least a half-dozen current and pending missions to Mars, including NASA’s Odyssey, Global Surveyor and Pathfinder missions and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission, which launched in June. Such involvement is supported by grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. NASA alone provides millions of dollars in funding to the university each year, and has done so for decades.

“These are our most successful external funding programs,” said Simon Peacock, chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at ASU.

Take Phil Christensen, a professor and planetary geologist who came to the university in 1981 as a post-doctoral scholar. He became an assistant professor in 1987 and has since become one of ASU’s most prolific researchers. Since 1990, Christensen has brought the university nearly $65 million in research funding, primarily from NASA through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). If he were his own college at ASU, Christensen would rank 5th overall in average annual research funding.

Two spacecraft currently orbiting Mars contain instruments designed and engineered by Christensen’s research team and are, at this moment, beaming invaluable data back to Earth. His instruments identify the composition of the Martian surface and atmosphere by measuring the thermal infrared energy, or heat, given off by the planet. Christensen is a principal investigator for both missions, and his thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS) on board the Odyssey is actually controlled directly from labs at ASU. In addition, NASA just launched two rovers in its new Mars Exploration Rover program in June, and both “landers” contain instruments designed and engineered by Christensen and his team.

The data generated from such missions helps scientists throughout the world to better understand the history of Mars’ evolution and whether or not life has ever existed there. With this information, they hope to gain a better understanding of the history of all the planets in the solar system, including Earth.

Maroon & gold to the Red Planet

It all began in 1977, when Ronald Greeley rumbled onto campus with two moving vans of lab equipment and a team of about 25 scientists. Direct from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, where he had studied the moon for more than a decade, Greeley brought the emerging field of planetary geology and, specifically, Martian geology, to ASU.

The university had recently acquired an extensive meteorite collection and had been studying lunar samples. Carleton Moore, a professor of chemistry and geology, was tapped as the curator for the collection and became the founding director for ASU’s Center for Meteorite Studies. He in turn recruited Greeley to develop the university’s planetary geology studies program.

Greeley’s work in Mars research began with the Viking mission, which landed on the surface of Mars in 1976. He was part of the original science team on the orbiter portion of that mission. Through the years he has chaired numerous committees in NASA’s Mars exploration program and also has been affiliated with NASA space probes to Venus and Jupiter. Greeley was a co-investigator for the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, and is a member of the science team for NASA’s current Mars rover program. He also hired Christensen.

“Phil was a key part of my research group,” Greeley said of Christensen. “And then, of course, he developed his own very successful independent program.”

Their individual successes helped fuel new opportunities for many other scientists at ASU and, collectively, they built a world-class Mars program. The addition of two more key faculty members in recent years -- Laurie Leshin and Jack Farmer -- helped secure ASU’s leadership position in Mars research for years to come.

Leshin, whom Garvin described as one of NASA’s “most favored rising stars,” earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from ASU in 1987. She returned in the mid-1990s to teach and study geological sciences. Leshin researches Martian meteorites and other extraterrestrial matter to uncover the history of water on the Red Planet. When Moore retired in January 2003, Leshin took the reins as director of the ASU Center for Meteorite Studies.

Her proposal to collect samples of Martian atmospheric dust was selected by NASA late last year as one of four finalists for the first Mars Scout mission. The Scout program plans to mount at least one mission (and perhaps several) to Mars beginning in 2007, with budgets of up to $325 million per mission. It’s part of a new way of doing business for NASA -- a search for innovative exploration ideas on a modest budget. As a finalist, Leshin, and major partners JPL and Lockheed Martin, received a $500,000 grant to further refine the proposal, called “Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars” (SCIM), prior to the final selection in August.

Farmer, who earned his doctorate in paleontology, came to ASU in 1998. His career has included work as a museum scientist at the University of California at Davis, a petroleum geologist for Exxon, a professor of Earth science at UCLA, and a post at NASA where he worked to interpret the fossil record of microorganisms. Farmer is now a planetary geologist and director of ASU’s astrobiology program.

Astrobiology is a new and rapidly developing field that studies life in the universe. It’s an interdisciplinary science, which brings together the physical and biological sciences to address the most fundamental questions of the natural world. How does life begin? Are we alone? What is the future of life on Earth and beyond?

In 1998 NASA established the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). Under Farmer’s leadership, ASU was selected as one of only five inaugural university partners for the institute. He currently chairs the NAI Mars Focus Group and is actively engaged in site selection studies for future Mars missions to search for past or present life.

Mars Magic

In the 1870s, when telescope observations first suggested the existence of “canals” on Mars, people began to seriously contemplate the existence of intelligent life on the Red Planet. While no one believes that to be true today, the idea of little green men from Mars still permeates contemporary culture in a big way. People are curious. They yearn to explore. And the planets represent the proverbial final frontier.

“Mars, in particular, is one of the closest planets. It is the one most likely to see humans on the surface within our lifetime,” said Peacock. “The term Martian is part of our vocabulary -- we don’t talk about Venusians or Jupiterians, but Martians. There’s something innately interesting about what’s there and in our ability to get there and find out.”

Because Mars is a topic that people of all ages can get excited about, it serves as a powerful educational tool, as a relatively easy way to engage students in the sciences and technology, according to Jonathan Fink, vice president of research and economic affairs at ASU.

“The group of scientists and educators that we have at ASU has done a good job of engaging students,” Fink said. “We have some unique educational opportunities for our undergraduate and graduate students, because they can actually work on real planetary missions. They are getting their hands on the data first. They’re learning what it takes to design spacecraft and propose missions to NASA.”

ASU offers unparalleled educational opportunities for younger students, as well. Thousands of school children get close-up looks at space exploration through ASU’s Mars K-12 programs. Funded by NASA and JPL, and directed by ASU’s Sheri Klug, the programs offer students tours of the ASU space flight facilities, teacher workshops onsite and across the country, school visits, and much more.

“They’re bringing school children in and allowing them to choose where they want to take a picture on Mars. Then Phil’s group sends up the signals to the spacecraft saying ‘take a picture here,’ and the children are the first people on the planet Earth to see that picture,” enthused Peacock. “So it’s not just cookbook exercises. They literally get to decide where on Mars the picture is taken, and then they get to interpret those images.”

Outreach programs such as these are a critical component to all the Mars research taking place at ASU. They stoke the imagination and help fill the pipeline for tomorrow’s scientists.

“We’re not going to be able to get through all the data and know where to go next without the next generation coming out of the pipeline four, eight, 12 years from now,” said NASA’s Garvin.

“The student outreach programs that Sheri Klug runs out of ASU are among the best in the nation. They hook the kids, get them excited about space. I want those kids that are in school now to one day run the program that sends people to Mars. That’s my dream.”

Back to Earth

As thrilling as missions to Mars can be, a great deal of exciting background research and field study is conducted by ASU scientists right here on Earth -- analyzing the data that is transmitted from the orbiters and landers, mapping volcanic features on the planet, simulating Mars sand and dust storms in the laboratory, examining Martian meteorite samples, and studying terrains on Earth that scientists believe to be comparable to that of Mars.

“We always have to maintain a balance of working with existing scientific data, versus the time spent in planning for a future mission, because you never know if it is going to work or not,” explained Greeley.

Sad but true, many missions simply do not turn out as planned. Historically, in fact, about two out of every three missions to Mars have failed, according to Greeley. Christensen’s thermal emissions spectrometer (TES), currently functioning on board the Mars Global Surveyor, is actually the second TES his team built. The first was on the Observer spacecraft, which failed just three days before it was to enter Mars’ orbit in 1993. Leshin had equipment on NASA’s ill-fated Polar Lander mission, which launched in January 1999 and was lost in space 11 months later.

“So, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket,” Greeley said. “Yes, we want to make sure that we are getting involved in future missions; but at the same time, we’re maintaining a strong research program with the data that we already have.”

Jessica McCann is a professional freelance writer based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

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Students from the Wade Carpenter Middle Academy in Nogales, left, look at tools for studying Mars in ASU's Moeur Building.

An illustration shows the Mars Rover. A working model is on display in the lobby of the Moeur Building. Image by NASA Langley Research Center.