Professor Ian Crawford

Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology

Contact details

Room 605, Malet Street

tel: 020 3073 8026

email: i.crawford@bbk.ac.uk

News

Ian has been invited to join the European Space Agency's Science Definition Team for the proposed Russian-led Lunar Polar Sample Return Mission.

The Natural Environment Research Council have done a news feature on our group's astrobiology work in Iceland (based on a paper in press with the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, led by Dr Claire Cousins) for their 'Planet Earth Online' website.

Together with James Carpenter (ESA), Ralf Jaumann (DLR) and Charles Cockell (Edinburgh), in December 2012 Ian was a Guest Editor of a Special Issue of Planetary and Space Science devoted to the topic of "Scientific Preparations for Lunar Exploration." The contents of this Special Issue can be viewed here.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the last Apollo mission to the Moon, Ian has written a short article describing the scientific resullts from the Apollo programme (see 'The Scientific Legacy of Apollo', Astronomy and Geophysics, 53, 6.24-6.6.28).

Ian Crawford has been awarded a grant of £99,318 by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to identify the source localities of lunar meteorites. This study will combine spacecraft remote sensing observations of the Moon with laboratory analyses of lunar meteorites. The grant will fund a PhD studentship.

In December Ian organised a Royal Astronomical Society meeting on  "Lunar Science as a Window into the Early Evolution of the Solar System and Conditions on the Early Earth". The meeting was held on 9 November 2012, and a summary can be found here.