Lecturer: Nick Thomas, University of Bern
Nicolas Thomas was born in Shrewsbury, UK and graduated from Leicester University before obtaining a DPhil. from the University of York in 1986. He accepted a Post-Doc. at the Max-Planck-Inst. für Aeronomie in Katlenburg-Lindau to work on the calibration and analysis of images of comet Halley from the Giotto spacecraft. After working for two years at ESA/ESTEC, he returned to a staff position at Max-Planck where he worked on the Huygens probe imager, Mars Pathfinder (where he met Dan Britt), Mars Polar Lander, Deep Space 1, and the Rosetta imaging system, OSIRIS. For the latter, he worked on the conceptual design, the software, calibration and test. In 2003, he was offered a Professorship in Experimental Physics at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He then became hardware PI for the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter and PI for the CaSSIS imaging system currently orbiting Mars on ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter. He is also a co-I on HiRISE for MRO and the Europa Clipper camera, EIS. He has a well-known liking for gin and tonic. He hates mushrooms and writing bios of himself.
Topic: The surfaces of small NEOs: Challenges for sampling
Recorded talk: No recording