Michael C. Malin

Michael C. Malin ( born 1950 in Los Angeles, California) is an American physicist, planetary scientist and geoscientists. He developed the camera for the Mars Global Surveyor and other Mars missions.

Malin 1971 acquired his bachelor's degree in physics at the University of California, Berkeley and received his doctorate in 1975 in Planetary Science and Geology at Caltech. After that, he was from 1975 to 1979 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he worked on the Viking 1 and Voyager missions. He was an Assistant Professor from 1979 and from 1987 Professor of Geology at Arizona State University, where he taught until 1990. During this time he made in 1985 a proposal for a NASA mission, which photographed the surface of Mars with a high resolution camera. He received $ 50,000 for a first draft and then developed a camera that was used in 1992 on the failed Mars Observer Mission, where she was able to deliver only a few photos. A second camera came in 1996 with the Mars Global Surveyor mission to use. Malin had founded in 1990 the company Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which developed the cameras.

The Global Surveyor spacecraft delivered to 2006 photos. Malin said on some of the photos to have evidence of the former presence of water found on Mars, which he went public in 2006. ( Evidence of water in a very early stage of Mars, he published in 2003 ). This was greeted with skepticism at the time, but later supported by other scientists.

He was also involved in other Mars missions, such as the Mars Exploration Rover and last amended on Mars Science Laboratory.

In 2006 he received the Carl Sagan Memorial Award and 1987 he was a MacArthur Fellow.