Moon, Mars and Mercury research awarded grant by Science and Technology Facilities Council
A consolidated grant from STFC will support major projects led by the department's planetary science academics.
The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences has been awarded a consolidated grant by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to support our work in planetary science research. The grant, which was awarded to Professor Ian Crawford, Professor Hilary Downes and Dr Peter Grindrod, is worth £381,166 over three years and will mostly support projects relating to what meteorites can tell us about the other planets of the Solar System.
The major part of the award will fund a post-doctoral research assistant to help Dr Grindrod identify the source locations on Mars from which martian meteorites found on Earth are derived; by providing the geological context for these meteorites, the project will greatly add to their value as windows into the geological evolution of Mars. Other areas supported by the grant include a similar project led by Professor Crawford to locate the source regions of lunar meteorites, and a project by Professor Downes to investigate what certain classes of meteorite may tell us about the composition of the planet Mercury.