Mr Chris Malliband

I am in my third year of postgraduate study at the OU. The main goal of my project is to produce a geological map of the Derain quadrangle of Mercury. This has lead to work on small smooth patches, and what they may be able to tell us about Mercury's late magmatic history. I am also looking at small scale mass movements on Mercury, some of which may have a link to Mercury's enigmatic hollows.

Mercury has been the least explored terrestrial planet. Recent imagery from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has provided the first global dataset and the first imagery of the Derain quadrangle. My work is part of an international project to map Mercury in preparation for ESA/JAXA’s upcoming BepiColombo mission to Mercury.

Prior to starting at the Open University, I completed an MSci in Geoscience at the University of Durham. I completed research examining the timing of volcanism and structural geology in an area including Perunitsa and Khosedem Fossae, on Venus.