Picture of James Mortimer

Dr James Mortimer

Project Officer (Lunar Volatiles)

School of Physical Sciences

Biography

Research interests

  • Volatiles in the Solar System, particularly light element volatiles (including H, C, N, O, noble gases etc.), and their source(s), modes of delivery, and contributions to the volatile budgets of airless bodies and telluric atmospheres

External collaborations

  • Member of ESA's PROSPECT Science Team

Projects

Publications

Journal Article

The effectiveness of microwave heating as an ISRU extraction technique on different arrangements of icy lunar regolith (2025)

PROSPECT: A comprehensive sample acquisition and analysis package for lunar science and exploration (2024)

The Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS) Investigation Development and Preflight Planning (2024)

Constraining the Evolutionary History of the Moon and the Inner Solar System: A Case for New Returned Lunar Samples (2019)

D/H fractionation during sublimation of water ice at low temperatures into a vacuum (2018)

Predominantly Non-Solar Origin of Nitrogen in Lunar Soils (2016)

Simultaneous analysis of abundance and isotopic composition of nitrogen, carbon, and noble gases in lunar basalts: insights into interior and surface processes on the Moon (2015)

Magmatic volatiles (H, C, N, F, S, Cl) in the lunar mantle, crust, and regolith: abundances, distributions, processes, and reservoirs (2015)

Presentation / Conference

Experimentally Exploring Factors Affecting Water Ice Sublimation Rates to Inform Development of ESA’s PROSPECT Package (2020)

An Experimental Approach to Understanding Sublimation Water Ice Losses from Planetary Regolith Analogue Mixtures for ESA’s PROSPECT Package (2019)

ProSPA: An instrument for lunar polar volatiles prospecting and in situ resource utilization proof of concept (2018)

ProSPA: Analysis of Lunar Polar Volatiles and ISRU Demonstration on the Moon (2018)

PROSPECTing for Lunar Polar Volatiles: the ProSPA Miniature In-situ Science Laboratory (2017)

ProSPA: the Science Laboratory for the Processing and Analysis of Lunar Polar Volatiles within PROSPECT (2017)

Trapping of Atmospheric Gases During Crushing of Lunar Samples (2017)

Preparing and Characterizing Carbonaceous Chondrite Standards for Verification of ESA’S ‘Prospect’ Package (2017)

Investigating the distribution and source(s) of volatiles on the lunar surface (2013)

Using stable isotope geochemistry to investigate the source(s) of volatiles in the lunar regolith (2013)

Thesis

Investigating the Distribution and Source(s) of Lunar Volatiles (2016)