{"id":47190,"date":"2017-04-20T08:55:39","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=47190"},"modified":"2017-04-20T08:55:39","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:55:39","slug":"mars-rover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/mars-rover\/","title":{"rendered":"New, high-tech lab enables NAU researchers, students to command Mars Curiosity Rover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a buzz of extraterrestrial activity going on in Room 230 of the Physical Sciences Building at NAU. That\u2019s where <strong>Christopher Edwards<\/strong>, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, just opened the new Mars Rover Operations and Analysis Laboratory, where faculty researchers and students will use sophisticated equipment to help command the day-to-day activities of NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/msl\/\">Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover<\/a> (MSL) operating on the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards, along with his students and postdocs, will use this facility to collaborate with scientists from throughout the country, as well as engineers and rover operators at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/\">NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a> (JPL), to help develop the scientific plan for activities the rover will carry out on the Red Planet on any given day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re excited to have this wonderful new facility on NAU\u2019s campus run by Dr. Edwards,\u201d <strong>President Rita Cheng <\/strong>said at the opening celebration for the lab April 18. \u201cThis facility places NAU as one of a handful of prestigious institutions throughout the country actively contributing to NASA solar system exploration missions, and we\u2019re proud to add this to NAU\u2019s research portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Edwards, a planetary geologist using orbiter and lander data to understand the past environments of Mars, joined NAU in 2016. He\u2019s been planning the new lab even before he arrived on campus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis facility enables my students and postdocs to not only investigate pressing science questions related to Mars and other solar system bodies but to interact with MSL team members across the country and rover planners at JPL on a daily basis,\u201d Edwards said<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would like to thank President Cheng, Dean <strong>Paul Jagodzinski<\/strong>, Provost <strong>Dan Kain<\/strong> and Vice President for Research <strong>Bill Grabe<\/strong> for their support in making both this facility and our new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physics.nau.edu\/AstroPhD\">Ph.D. program in astronomy and planetary science<\/a> a reality,\u201d said <strong>Stephen Tegler<\/strong>, chair of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physics.nau.edu\/\">Department of Physics and Astronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m happy to lead this mission operations center at NAU and I\u2019m actively working to make sure we have additional opportunities to conduct mission operations from this facility,\u201d added Edwards, who is a participating scientist on MSL.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards has worked on numerous other instruments on board Mars missions, including the 2001 Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (<a href=\"http:\/\/themis.asu.edu\/\">THEMIS<\/a>), Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (<a href=\"http:\/\/tes.asu.edu\/\">TES<\/a>) and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (<a href=\"http:\/\/crism.jhuapl.edu\/\">CRISM<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/mars-rover\/\">There\u2019s a buzz of extraterrestrial activity going on in Room 230 of the Physical Sciences Building at NAU. That\u2019s where Christopher Edwards, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, just opened the new Mars Rover Operations and Analysis Laboratory, where faculty researchers and students will use sophisticated equipment to help command the day-to-day activities of NASA\u2019s&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":47199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}