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About Jörn Helbert
Jörn Helbert studied physics at the Technical University in Braunschweig. He completed the majority of his thesis at Imperial College in London, where he also worked on the original ESA cluster mission. The loss of the mission at launch directly familiarised him with the risks of space missions. However, this did not deter him from continuing in this field. He went to the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and completed his doctorate on the chemistry in the coma of the comet Hale-Bopp at the Free University of Berlin. After his doctorate, he worked at DLR on the modelling of ice in the subsurface of Mars and the evaluation of data from the PFS instrument on Mars Express. It was here that he discovered his interest in the possibilities of remote sensing of planetary surfaces in the infrared.
He was involved in the preparation of the proposal for the MERTIS (MERcury Radiometer and Thermal infrared Imaging Spectrometer) instrument for the BepiColombo mission and has remained loyal to the instrument ever since - first as Science Manager and since 2007 as Co-Principle Investigator. To prepare the scientific data analysis of MERTIS, Jörn Helbert set up the planetary spectroscopy laboratories at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research. In this globally unique laboratory, samples can be spectrally measured at temperatures under realistic conditions for the surface of Mercury (440 degrees Celsius and vacuum).
Jörn Helbert was selected by NASA as a Participating Scientist for the MESSENGER mission to Mercury (2011-2015), where he actively worked on analysing the spectral data.
In addition to Mercury, he is also interested in Venus, particularly surface mineralogy. With Venus Express, he has shown that the composition of the surface can be determined from near-infrared data. Since the end of the Venus Express mission, Jörn Helbert has been working on a return to Venus with an instrument that has been specially developed for this task.
In general, Jörn Helbert's scientific interest lies in the investigation of planetary surfaces under extreme conditions. He has been coordinating the "Distributed Planetary Simulation Facilities" as part of the EuroPlanet research infrastructure for several years. In this network of seven leading laboratories in Europe, conditions can be simulated from the inner to the outer solar system and from planetary atmospheres deep into the planet's interior.
It is also involved in JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission. In addition to analysing the data from the infrared instrument on the mission, he is preparing the analysis of samples that Hayabusa2 will bring back to Earth at the end of 2020.