The DISR team is one of the largest of the Huygens instrument teams. The members are based throughout the United States and Europe, with the largest contributing groups from the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), The Max Planck Institute (Lindau, Germany), and the Paris Observatory (Grenoble, France).
Below are descriptions and pictures of the team members.
US-based Team (*asterisk on those expected to be at ESOC Germany for encounter results):
Dr.
Martin Tomasko- DISR
Principal Investigator, Research Professor
* Marty has been responsible for the concept of the instrument, management of
the hardware development, coordination with the European hardware teams,
calibration of the flight instrument, and the activities of the DISR Science
Team to analyze and publish the results of the experiment. He has provided
overall leadership of all aspects of the DISR experiment at Titan including the
vision and dedication to conceive and carry-out the DISR idea from concept
development through laboratory calibration to mission data analysis,
international team participant recruiting, winning the competitive NASA award
for this unique mission, and leading a contractual effort with Lockheed-Martin
Aerospace of Denver to build the DISR instrument which packed unprecedented and
innovative optical science-detector instrumentation into the Huygens Probe.
Additionally, as a Research Professor, he was responsible for the doctoral level
education of many students, some of whom are listed below as major
contributors, themselves, to the Cassini-Huygens effort.
Dr. Lyn Doose- DISR Deputy Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator:
Head of Software Development, Senior Research Associate
Lyn has over 30 years of experience in understanding and modeling the radiative
transfer of thermal energy in planetary atmospheres. He was responsible for
developing the software modeling codes used to analyze the data obtained by the
DISR sensors. He developed software to understand the behavior of the DISR
instrument in Titan’s atmosphere including all the temperature,
wavelength, and optical effects of the flight hardware. He also played a
leading role in designing the concepts used in the flight software, working
closely with Lockheed-Martin Aerospace of Denver to build the DISR instrument.
Lyn analyzes data from the DISR spectrometers for the vertical distribution and
optical properties of Titan’s haze aerosols.
Peter
H. Smith—DISR Co-Investigator , Senior Research Scientist
* Peter has a MS degree in Optics from the UA Optical Sciences program, and
played a key role in developing the concept for the DISR instrument. Without
his contributions at the earliest stages of the DISR program the instrument
would not be as capable as it is. Peter will concentrate on analyzing our
side-looking imager data for evidence of
thin hydrocarbon hazes in the lower stratosphere. Peter has also conducted
extensive Mars exploration and is today also the Principal Investigator for the
Phoenix Mission to Mars, the single largest contract ever awarded to UA.
Laura Ellen Dafoe, Senior Staff
Engineer
* Laura Ellen was the systems engineer at Lockheed-Martin Aerospace in Denver
leading engineering coordination of the various subsystems of the DISR
instrument and interface control of the German and French supplied detectors.
Since Cassini-Huygens launch she has worked for UA part-time from her home in
Denver providing important DISR data analysis and interpretation.
Dr. Steffi Engel, Associate Staff
Scientist
Steffi has had a leading role in developing the software necessary to obtain
the vertical distribution and optical properties of the haze aerosols on Titan
from the DISR Visible and Infrared Spectrometers. She also played a critical
role in the analysis of the calibration data from the visible spectrometer from
the measurements taken in our calibration laboratory.
Dr. Erich Karkoschka, Senior Staff Scientist
* Erich has not had a fixed formal role in the DISR experiment team. However
his interaction at critical times has resulted in many improvements in the DISR
instrument. He is directly responsible for the successful operation of our
hardware data compression system. He has developed and provided software
capable of sharpening and otherwise improving our images. Finally, he has
assembled the absorbing properties of methane gas for our analysis of the
“relative humidity” in Titan’s atmosphere.
Michael
Prout—Project
Coordinator
Mike Prout is the business manager on the DISR program responsible for all
contracts, financial reporting, and funding from NASA/JPL to UA as well as to
the DISR subcontractors. He managed the DISR university hardware contract with
our aerospace partner Lockheed-Martin Aerospace in Denver and worked closely
with Lockheed-Martin as they built the DISR instrument. During DISR development
he coordinated project management with the European Space Agency, as well as
Aerospatiale, and Daimler Aerospace as they produced the Huygens Probe for the
European Space Agency. He also managed the collaboration agreements with DISR
Co-Investigator teams in Germany and France. In addition, he participated in
the analysis of data from the Ultraviolet Photometer during cruise checkouts
and will also participate in the analysis of the Ultraviolet Photometer system
data from Titan.
Chuck
See, Senior Staff Engineer
* Chuck has served as our key hardware engineer for the instrument since it was
launched in 1997 and has taken the lead in analyzing and reducing the data from
all sixteen in-flight checkouts since launch as well as developing the command
sequences sent to the instrument for testing and tuning the performance of DISR
on board the Huygens Probe. Together with Chuck Fellows and Bashar Rizk, he
collected all the calibration measurements on the three versions of the DISR
instrument that were produced, including the flight model now on board the
Huygens Probe. He worked extensively with Aerospatiale and Daimler Aerospace as
they produced the Huygens Probe for the European Space Agency. He has taken a
leading role in providing the resources we need at the European Space
Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt Germany to analyze the data when it
returns to Earth.
This page was contributed by Mike Prout.
German Team
Bjoern Grieger, scientist
Stefan Schroeder, scientist
Wojtek Markiewicz, scientist
Uwe Keller, co-investigator
Michael Kueppers, scientist
French Team
Athena Coustenis, co-investigator
Bernard Schmitt, co-investigator
Sylvain Doute, scientist
Bruno Bezard, co-investigator
The well-dispersed other members of the DISR Team
Jonathan Lunine; LPL interdisciplinary scientist
Larry Soderblom; Flagstaff, AZ (USGS) co-investigator
Bob West; JPL liason, co-investigator
...and our press liason, Lori Stiles
