Marie Curie Alumna Plays Key Role in Mars Curiosity

Bethany L. Ehlmann – US researcher who has recently benefited from a Marie Curie fellowship at the Institut Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS), Universite Paris-Sud (France) – is now zapping rocks with lasers on Mars. As Assistant Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology, she is participating in the Curiosity Mars Project. More precisely, she is part of the control room team on Earth that runs the ChemCam tests and analyses their results. ChemCam – short for Chemistry and Camera – is a sophisticated instrument placed on the Mars Curiosity rover - the mobile space laboratory exploring the surface of the "Red Planet" since the beginning of August.