The first results from the ExoMars mission supported by the UK Space Agency reveal the effects of a massive, global dust storm on the Red Planet.
British instruments reveal secrets of martian sky

Over the last year the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft followed the onset of the storm and monitored how the increase in dust affected the water vapour in the atmosphere - important for understanding the history of water on Mars.

Peter Norreys, Oxford’s Professor of Inertial Fusion Science, is chairing the “International Conference on High Energy Density Science” in University College Oxford on behalf of the Institute of Physics plasma physics group from 1st – 5th April 2019. The 120 registered participants from all over the world will be coming to Oxford discuss a range of topics ranging from the behaviour of matter under extreme pressures, laboratory plasma astrophysics, progress in inertial confinement fusion through to high laser electric field phenomena.

On Wednesday, 20 March 2019, The Institute of Physics announced the launch of The Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship bursary scheme.

Sometimes satellites can provide an unexpected view of events. On the 18th December 2018 a huge meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the northern Pacific Ocean, an event that – due to its isolated location – attracted very little attention at the time. American military satellites that look for bright flashes detected the meteor as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere and this enabled scientists at NASA to calculate its trajectory[1].

Oliver Humphries and Sam Vinko from Oxford Physics were part of one of the first user experiments to take place at the European XFEL, the flagship x-ray free-electron laser facility currently being commissioned at DESY in Hamburg, Germany. The first user results were reported at the annual XFEL User meeting on 23 January.