Michael C. Malin

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Michael C. Malin (born 1950 in Los Angeles , California ) is an American physicist , planetologist and geoscientist. He developed the camera for the Mars Global Surveyor and other Mars missions.

Malin earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971 and his PhD in planetology and geology from Caltech in 1975 . He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1975 to 1979 , where he participated in the Viking 1 and Voyager missions. He was from 1979 assistant professor and from 1987 professor of geology at Arizona State University , where he taught until 1990. During this time, in 1985, he made a proposal to NASA for a mission that photographed the surface of Mars with a high-resolution camera. He received $ 50,000 for a preliminary design and then developed a camera that was used on the failed Mars Observer mission in 1992 , where it could only provide a few photos. A second camera was used in 1996 on the Mars Global Surveyor mission. Malin founded Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego in 1990 , which developed the cameras.

The Global Surveyor probe provided photos until 2006. Malin said he had found evidence of the earlier existence of water on Mars in some of the photos, which he made public in 2006. (He published evidence of water at a very early stage on Mars in 2003). This was received with skepticism at the time, but later supported by other scientists.

He was also involved in other Mars missions, for example the Mars Exploration Rover and most recently at the Mars Science Laboratory .

In 2006 he received the Carl Sagan Memorial Award and in 1987 he was a MacArthur Fellow .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malin, Kenneth Edgett Evidence for Recent Groundwater Seepage and Surface Runoff on Mars , Science, Volume 288, 2000, pp. 2330-2335
  2. ↑ Malin, Edgett Evidence for persistent flow and aqueous sedimentation on early Mars , Science, Volume 302, 2003, pp. 1931-1934
personal data
SURNAME Malin, Michael C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist, planetologist, and geoscientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California