Javier Martín-Torres


Javier Martín-Torres is a Spanish physicist with interests in atmospheric sciences, geophysics, and astrobiology. He has published over 150 scientific papers in these areas, and contributed to more than 500 presentations at international conferences.
He is a chaired professor in Atmospheric Sciences at Luleå Tekniska Universitet, Sweden, and Senior Research Scientist of the Spanish Research Council, assigned to the Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, located in Armilla, Granada, Spain. He is also a visiting professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, and a Specially Appointed Professor at Okayama University. Previously he has worked for ESA, the California Institute of Technology, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and 10 years for NASA at the Langley Research Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Mars research

Martin-Torres is the principal investigator of the HABIT instrument, which will travel to Mars as part of the scientific payload of the ExoMars 2020 mission to investigate, amongst other things, the water exchange cycle between the atmosphere and the Martian regolith.
Martin-Torres is also a Co-I on the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter ACS instrument, and ISEM/ExoMars rover.

He has been the scientist responsible for the REMS instrument in NASA's Curiosity rover, which since 2012 investigates the habitability of Mars, and co-investigator of 5 space missions of NASA and ESA.

Martin-Torres is co-author of the latest reported discoveries about Martian environment, namely, the presence of fixed nitrogen, native organics in Martian ground, the detection of methane plumes in the atmosphere and, remarkably, the daily formation of liquid aqueous solutions on the soil.

Transient liquid water on Mars

The article Transient liquid water and water activity at Gale crater on Mars, reported the existence of a daily cycle of water exchange between the atmospheric boundary layer and the ground, including a phase during which the water remains in a transient liquid state. This is possible thanks to the presence in the soil of perchlorates, a highly hygroscopic kind of chlorine salts which seem to be ubiquitous over the Martian surface. These salts have the capability of catching water vapour from the environment up to the point of becoming solved in it forming concentrated solutions or brines. It is an extreme case of hygroscopy known as deliquescence.
The eutectic temperature of these brines allows its permanence in liquid state under the registered Martian environmental conditions in the study area of Curiosity, close to the equator, where they are the least favourable for this to happen. Therefore, it is expected that the phenomenon is more intense in terms of duration of the liquid phase in higher latitudes.

The presence of liquid water on present day Mars entails transcendent consequences in a number of aspects of the planet's exploration. Firstly, it casts a new light on the comprehension of Martian environment, and can be the key to understand some morphological features of the surface, such as the so-called Recurrent Slope Lineae. In addition, the discovery has posed the necessity for taking special precautions to avoid biological contamination of the planet with terrestrial organisms carried on board the spacecrafts to be sent in the next missions, since the availability of liquid water multiply the possibilities for them to survive and thrive in certain places. Finally, water can be a valuable in-situ resource at the disposal of a crew which is eventually sent to Mars someday.

However, the brines themselves have not been monitored yet, and a quantification of the phenomenon is still missing. This is what the Brine Observation Transition to Liquid Experiment is being developed for.

Radiative Transfer modelling

Martin-Torres has developed non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium models to explain the emissions of some of the main emitters in the infrared ; and has been part of the Science Team of MIPAS/Envisat, SABER/TIMED, and Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

Martin-Torres is author of the line-by radiative transfer code FUTBOLIN, which is widely used to model radiative processes in the atmosphere. It has been used to model the Earth's atmosphere and the atmospheres like those of Mars, Venus, and Titan, and simulations of Earthshine for exoplanet applications.

Selected publications