The Mars Space Flight Facility is located at

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

Tempe, Arizona Tempe ( ; ''Oidbaḍ'' in O'odham language, O'odham) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2020 population of 180,587. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in t ...

. The facility is a research center in Arizona State University's School for Earth and Space Exploration. Scientists, researchers, and students there specialize in using instruments on spacecraft at

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

for remote sensing research primarily concerning the geology and mineralogy of the planet. The instruments based at the facility include the

Thermal Emission Imaging System The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) is a camera on board the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. It images Mars in the visible and infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to determine the thermal properties of the surface and to ...

(THEMIS) on NASA's

Mars Odyssey ''2001 Mars Odyssey'' is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectro ...

orbiter and two Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometers (Mini-TES) on the

Mars Exploration Rovers NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, '' Spirit'' and '' Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rovers to explore the Martian surface ...

, Spirit and Opportunity. (A full-size Mars rover model, bedded on reddish-brown sand, dominates the building's lobby.) Before the loss of NASA's

Mars Global Surveyor ''Mars Global Surveyor'' (MGS) was an American Robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It launched November 1996 and collected data from 1997 to 2006. MGS was a global mapping mission that examined ...

in November 2006, the facility also operated the

Thermal Emission Spectrometer The Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) was an instrument on board Mars Global Surveyor. TES collected two types of data, hyperspectral thermal infrared data from 6 to 50 micrometres (μm) and bolometric visible-near infrared (0.3 to 2.9 μm) me ...

(TES) aboard the spacecraft. On May 25, 2011, NASA announced a New Frontiers Mission,

OSIRIS-REx OSIRIS-REx was a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission that visited and collected samples from 101955 Bennu, a C-type asteroid, carbonaceous near-Earth object, near-Earth asteroid. The material, returned in September 2023, is expected ...

, to a carbonaceous asteroid. The mission will include OTES, an updated and modified version of the Mini-TES Spectrometer from the MER missions. The facility's director is Dr. Phil Christensen; he is the principal investigator of the

THEMIS In Greek mythology and religion, Themis (; ) is the goddess and personification of justice, divine order, law, and custom. She is one of the twelve Titan children of Gaia and Uranus, and the second wife of Zeus. She is associated with oracles a ...

instrument, a co-investigator on the

Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rove ...

project, and the principal investigator of the Mini-TES instrument on board the rovers. He was also the principal investigator for

(TES). In addition, the facility houses the Mars Education Program, which provides workshops, field trips, and other opportunities for teachers and students to join with scientists in Mars exploration.

References

External links

Mars Space Flight Facility homepage
{{Coord, 33.4179902, -111.9360869, display=title Arizona State University Buildings and structures in Tempe, Arizona Education in Maricopa County, Arizona Exploration of Mars