Reaching for the Red Planet: UK Space Agency Announces £1.6million for Mars Exploration

The UK Space Agency is making £1.6million available in support of projects to further explore our neighbouring planet

Mars and keep the UK at the forefront of ESA’s Aurora Programme a European long-term plan for the robotic and

human exploration of the solar system.

The new funding will support projects to better understand the past and present environment and geophysics of Mars,

characterise the biological environment of the planet and search for traces of past and present life.

The Aurora programme brings together the best of UK minds and industry, further develops our highly-skilled space sector and delivers economic impact through technology spin-outs.

The new funding scheme is open to academics and Research

Council Institutions for proposals to fund:

• Project Studentships to develop researchers to exploit future

data sets from Mars missions.

• Individual Fellowships to develop promising young

researchers or allow existing academics to discipline-hop.

• Research Assistants to support academics on Mars

related science.

• Support for academics to participate in international science

teams to exploit data from future missions such as Nasa's

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

For more information, please see Announcement of

Opportunity on the UK agency website at

www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency