Christian Muller began his career in remote sensing of the earth's atmosphere at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy where he was in the team that discovered NO2, NO and HCl in the stratosphere at the time of the supersonic transport controversy, these observations were performed from stratospheric balloons and Concorde himself, this led naturally to atmospheric studies from space using SPACELAB and later ENVISAT as platforms. He moved to planetary studies with the Russian 1989 PHOBOS mission where he discovered and still defend the observation of Martian formaldehyde while the Viking mission did not detect any organics, this discovery should had confirmed by the SPICAM Mars96 instrument which was unfortunately lost before leaving the earth’s obit. The subject is still pending and will be among the themes of a Mars trace gas orbiter planned for 2018.
Christian Muller shared also the 2008 NASA group award for its participation to the iMARS group which designed a new strategy for Mars sample return preserving the liquid and volatile context of the samples.
Since 2000, Christian Muller is earth and space science coordinator at B.USOC, supporting users of the International Space Station and of the future manned exploration programme.
