Dynamic Mars

Richard Soare is a physical geographer and planetary scientist who specializes in periglacial (cold-climate, non-glacial) landscapes. For over two decades Dr. Soare has studied the mid-latitudes of Mars, i.e. Utopia Planitia, the Argyre region and the Martian dichotomy, and explored the possibility of freeze-thaw cycled water having revised the near-surface geology of these areas from the present and relatively recent past through to their deep-history. His published work in major planetary-science journals such as Icarus and Earth and Planetary Science has integrated HiRISE/CTX imagery with crater-age estimates, digital elevation models and SHARAD/MARSIS data sets. Much of this Mars-centred work has been informed by multiple field seasons in the Canadian arctic (the Tuktoyaktuk Coastlands and Axel Heiberg Island) and sub-arctic (Shefferville, Quebec). Currently, Dr. Soare is lead editing a book on Ices in the solar system (2022). Two books Dynamic Mars: recent and current landscape evolution of the red planet (2018) and Mars Geological Enigmas: From the Late Noachian Epoch to the Present Day (2021) preceded the Ices book. A fourth book, Mars Climate Change, will succeed the Ices book in two years. Prior to the postponement of the Next Mars Orbiter, the pre-cursor of the Mars Ice Mapper Mission, Dr. Soare served on the Canadian Space Agency’s pre-phase “A” planning committee. He was tasked with and focused on identifying mid-latitudinal regions of Mars where near-surface ground ice might be prevalent.

Professor, Department of Geography, Dawson College, Canada

Susan Conway is a CNRS research scientist in Nantes, France, having graduated with a PhD in planetary science from the Open University (United Kingdom) in 2010. She is chair of the International Association for Geomorphologists (IAG) Planetary Geomorphology Working Group, and has run the Planetary Geomorphology session at the European Geoscience Union since 2011. She is lead editor for a collection of papers on Martian gullies and their Earth analogues, based on the workshop she organized at the Geological Society of London in June 2016 and is co-editor on a collection of papers entitled "Frontiers in Geomorphometry". She is a team member on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Guest Investigator on the ESA Trace Gas Orbiter mission to Mars, specifically focused on the CaSSIS camera and NOMAD/ACS spectrometer instruments. She is on the author list of 35 peer-reviewed papers concerning the geomorphology of Earth, Mars, Mercury, the Moon and the asteroid Vesta. Her work is concentrated around glacial, periglacial and fluvial landforms on Mars, encompassing field, remote sensing and laboratory simulation data, with a specialty in analysis of 3D terrain data.

CNRS Researcher, CNRS UMR 6112 Laboratoire de Planetologie et Geodynamique, Universite de Nantes, France

Stephen Clifford is a Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. He received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Massachusetts in 1984. His research focuses on the nature, evolution and geophysical investigation of planetary volatiles, with a special emphasis on water on Mars. He is the author/co-author of 70 peer-reviewed publications whose topical focus has varied from investigations of H2O transport in cold planetary regoliths; large-scale groundwater transport; low-temperature hydrothermal convection in a sub-permafrost vadose zone; the formation and stability of gas hydrates; glacial flow and polar evolution; thermal modelling of planetary surfaces; the thermal, seismic and hydrologic effects of impact catering; and radar investigations of subsurface geology and the distribution and state of H2O. He was the principal convener of the 1st-4th International Conferences on Early Mars, 1st-5th International Conferences on Mars Polar Science and Exploration, and the Conference on the Geophysical Detection of Subsurface Water on Mars. Steve is the Deputy Science Team Leader for the WISDOM Ground Penetrating Radar which is part of the payload of ESA’s 2020 ExoMars Rover. He is also a U.S. Participating Scientist on the MARSIS orbital radar sounder on ESA’s Mars Express mission. Prior to joining the science staff at PSI in February 2018, Steve was a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, where he conducted his Mars research for 34 years.

Senior Scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, USA