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DSU receives NASA grant to fund interplanetary research

NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/ CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS
The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its laser to examine side-by-side points in a target patch of soil, leaving the marks apparent in this before-and-after comparison.

Delaware State University will be receiving a $5 million dollar grant from NASA to advance research in space exploration and technology.

Spread over five years, the grant will fund four different projects to gain a better understanding of the planet Mars and the regions of space beyond Earth.

Two of these projects will be to develop lasers and sensors to understand the Martian landscape. This will build on the technology that DSU researchers have already contributed to NASA.

Noureddine Melikechi, director of OSCAR, the Optical Science Center for Applied Research at DSU, developed one of several instruments currently operating on the Mars Curiosity Rover. The ChemCam, as it’s called, shoots out lasers at rock and soil to find chemicals that are necessary to support life.

Melikechi said the lasers researchers will develop with this grant will use infrared, or long wavelength light, which has previously not been used to study the surface of Mars. And he’s looking forward to what an infrared laser might reveal about potential life on the planet.

“This will be connected to finding signatures for environments that are habitable or not. If we are looking for biosignatures, this will be a new way to look for signatures that have not been explored in the past," said Melikechi.

 

The planned technologies will aid the Mars 2020 mission, in which NASA will send a new rover up to Mars to survey the planet for signs of life. It will also assess the challenges involved in manned expeditions to the red planet.  

 

Collaborators on these projects will also include researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Delaware and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 

Melikechi hopes this grant will help create opportunities that inspire students to seek a career in space research, and sustain these efforts in the long-term.

 

“The goal is to perform cutting edge research and create new knowledge in areas of NASA’s research," said Melikechi. "And we’ll do this by engaging students and creating the next generation of NASA scientists.”

Melikechi expects NASA research at DSU to continue expanding, especially given the advanced research facilities at the newly built OSCAR center, which will officially open in June.

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