COGEMA subsidiary Canberra Eurisys helps discover ice fields on Mars

Brief

June 04, 2002

As part of a collaborative effort by NASA, French space agency CNES, French space radiation research center CESR, and the astrophysics laboratory of Toulouse (LAT), the Mars Odyssey probe has provided detailed evidence of large quantities of water ice less than one meter beneath the surface of the red planet. The discovery was made with a gamma ray detector fabricated by Canberra Eurisys. A joint news release (in french) of CNES and the Midi-Pyrenees Observatory on 28 May 2002 recognized the critical role played by the French contributors to the project and the innovative character of the Canberra Eurisys detector, a germanium sensor encapsulated in titanium.