Phil James
Philip James received a Ph.D. in Physics from the
Univ. of Wisconsin in 1966.
He first became involved in Mars science
in 1977, when he worked on the Viking Project at
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
In 1986 and 1988 he led National Geographic
Society sponsored expeditions to Hawaii and Chile
to telescopically observe Mars while it was near
its previous set of favorable oppositions. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition
of his studies of the Martian climate. In 1990 Dr. James assumed the chairmanship of the Physics and Astronomy
Department at the Univ. of Toledo.
A science team of which he is PI
became the first General Observers to make science
observations using Hubble Space Telescope in 1990
and has continued to observe Mars with HST since
that time. One of their first images appeared on the cover of the May 1991
issue of Life. He is currently a Participating Scientist and
Team Member for the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) experiment
on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
He has been responsible for analysis of polar
processes and clouds using mapping images from MOC’s
wide-angle cameras.
He is also a member of the science team on
the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera, originally
designed for the 1988 Mars Surveyor orbiter that
crashed on Mars in 1999; the experiment will be
reflown as part of the payload for the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter, which will be launched in 2005. |
