************************************************************************ IERS Message No. 174 September 14, 2010 ************************************************************************ Invitation to M-mission Mars-GeO Dear Colleagues, I am contacting the geodesy community. You are working on the Earth, but perhaps you may want to extend your work to the planet Mars, which is very similar to the Earth in terms of geodesy. You may thus want to join the effort to do geodesy on Mars. We have decided to submit a medium-sized mission (M-mission) proposal for the ESA Call http://sci.esa.int/2010_M_Call with a possible launch in 2022. Our mission is called Mars-GeO (Mars Geophysical Laboratory) and aims at providing two (and maybe three) landers on the surface of Mars. We aim at geophysical observations: seismology, heat flow measurements, geodesy (radioscience), magnetic measurements, and meteorology. Mars-GeO is the first European mission to focus on interior processes and the early evolution of Mars, providing essential constraints for models of the thermal, geochemical, and geologic evolution of Mars. The landers shall also measure temperature and other parameters useful for meteorological models. Complementary instruments will be put on the spacecraft if the mass budget allow it with a priority to a magnetometer. If you are interested in the mission, we would like to invite you to sign the proposal. Please consider then to simply write an email to me (Veronique Dehant, v.dehant@oma.be) if this is the case. Thank you for your consideration. Veronique Dehant (1) With other collaborators, Breuer D. (2), Grott M. (2), Spohn T. (2), Lognonne Ph. (3), Forget F. (4), Read P. (5), Tortora P. (6), Vennerstroem S. (7), Johnson C. (8), Langlais B. (9), Mimoun D. (10), Ulamec S. (11), Biele J. (11), Romberg O. (12), Banerdt B. (13) (1) Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium (2) Institute of Planetary Research (DLR), Berlin, Germany (3) Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris, France (4) Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique, UPMC Paris, France (5) Oxford University, UK (6) University of Bologna, Italy (7) National Space Institute, DTU, Denmark (8) Earth and Ocean Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Canada (9) Planetologie et Geodynamique, University of Nantes, France (10) ISAE/Supaero, Toulouse, France (11) Space Operations and Astronaut Training (DLR), Cologne, Germany (12) Institute of Space Systems (DLR), Bremen, Germany (13) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA ************************************************************************ IERS Messages are edited and distributed by the IERS Central Bureau. To submit texts for distribution and to subscribe or unsubscribe, please write to . Archives: http://www.iers.org/Messages/ ************************************************************************