Congratulations to our professor Myriam Lemelin for her new Canada Research Chair in Northern and Planetary Geological Remote Sensing. We are proud to have Professor Lemelin's expertise in our department!

In addition, Professor Lemelin has obtained funding from the Canadian Space Agency's FAST program (Flights and Fieldwork for the Advancement of Science and Technology) to study geological formations in the Canadian Arctic that are analogous to formations that could be found on the planet Mars. Éloïse Brassard, a geomatics undergraduate student and current intern with the T-MARS team, is developing and implementing a web platform [N. B. on which you are currently navigating] to promote the project and communicate research results to the public.

Water and mineral resources are essential components of human activity on Earth and beyond. As a result of global warming, mineral resources in the Canadian Arctic will be more easily exploitable in the near future. The Moon, Mars and some asteroids also possess ice and minerals essential for human exploration of our solar system. These resources can also provide valuable information about the evolution of our solar system. In order to determine whether the resources would benefit from being protected or exploited in a sustainable manner, we must determine where they are located, in what quantities, and what the impacts of their exploitation would be.

Professor Myriam Lemelin and her team will work towards this goal using various remote sensing methods. For example, the team will study the composition of geological formations in the Canadian Arctic to better understand the environmental impacts of mining. Similar geological formations could also be found on the planet Mars and could have been home to a form of life in the past. The team will study the link between the two. It will also aim to determine the distribution of ice and minerals at the lunar poles and on certain asteroids in order to plan future space exploration missions

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