RoadMap

Role of and impact of Dust and clouds in the Martian AtmosPhere: from lab to space (RoadMap) will drastically enhance our knowledge of the Red Planet by focusing on the prominent role of dust and clouds in its atmosphere. The RoadMap project employs an integrated scientific approach including; laboratory simulations, modelling of specific phenomena, analysis of space data and Global Circulation Modelling. This will improve our vision of the Martian atmosphere and provide a new generation of high-level data, increasing the science return of the past and current missions to Mars as well as shaping future planetary missions.

We focus on two European missions that are still active around the Red Planet and in particular make use of the ExoMars TGO instrument NOMAD, which has been optimized for the detection of trace gases, dust and clouds in the Martian atmosphere.

The RoadMap consortium is composed of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB, Belgium), Aarhus University (AU, Denmark), the Duisburg & Essen University (UDE, Germany), the Instituto de Cerámica y Vidrio (ICV-CSIC, Spain), and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC, Spain) belonging to the Spanish Research Council (CSIC).

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004052.

Mars in a box

Mars in a box is an educational project aiming to introduce European secondary school students to fundamental science through cutting-edge research on Mars.

«Mars in a box» is a box full of materials for basic physics and chemistry experiments, as well as complementary material about the red planet.

The «physical» box will be distributed in about ten schools in the RoadMap partnering countries (Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Spain).