Planetary Science

The Planetary Science Group at MSSL is a leading research group studying planetary bodies and systems across the Solar System. Our overarching goal is to study the space environments of planets, moons & comets, and their interactions with, and the geology and habitability of, their surfaces. As such our activities fall within five science themes that combine to provide a broad planetary science perspective that integrates both surface and space plasma physics. These include geology & geomorphology, habitability, ices & environments, planetary magnetospheres and planetary atmospheres.

We are actively engaged in studying topics such as the interactions between plasma environments, exospheres, atmospheres and climate evolution; interactions and influences between planetary surfaces and host atmospheres; insights from terrestrial life into planetary dynamic habitability; organics, biosignatures and detection strategies in the search for life.

The group is analysing data from some of the Solar System's most interesting scientific targets, including Saturn and its moons Titan, Enceladus and Rhea, the Moon, Mars, Venus and comets, and are heavily involved in past, present and future missions to Mars, the Moon, comets and asteroids, Jupiter and its icy moons, Titan and other Solar System bodies. We are on the Science Teams for multiple missions such as the Canadian Lunar Rover Mission, BepiColombo and JUICE; and also build scientific instruments for missions, such as PanCam and Enfys for the 2028 Rosalind Franklin Mars Rover and the CAPS ELS spectrometer for the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

We work closely with the MSSL Space Plasma Physics and Imaging groups and the UCL Department of Physics and Astronomy, and are part of the Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck.

Resources:

Introduction to Planetary Science:
What is Planetary Science?
Seminar Series

Head of Planetary Science:
Dr Louisa Preston
l.preston@ucl.ac.uk