About the author

Tilman Spohn

Tilman Spohn is Principal Investigator of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) experiment of NASA's InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport). He was Director of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin from 2004 to 2017 and has been Executive Director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern since the beginning of 2019.

Following his habilitation in 1984 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main, he held a professorship at the Westphalian Wilhelms University.

As a geophysicist, he is particularly interested in the thermodynamic processes occuring inside the planets. This includes questions regarding the formation and evolution of planets, and how the processes inside the planets might be related to the formation and evolution of life.

Posts from Tilman Spohn

Space | 04. February 2021

InSight logbook – the Mars 'Mole' in the autumn of its mission

Tilman Spohn, Principal Investigator of the HP3 instrument on the InSight mission, has been providing us with regular updates on the 'Mole' since February 2019: what's happening on Mars right now? What's the weather like? How deep in the surface is the Mars 'Mole'? read more

Space | 16. October 2020

The InSight mission logbook

Tilman Spohn, Principal Investigator of the HP3 instrument on the InSight mission, has been providing us with regular updates on the 'Mole' since February 2019: what's happening on Mars right now? What's the weather like? How deep in the surface is the Mars 'Mole'? read more

Space | 07. July 2020

The InSight mission logbook (February 2019 - July 2020)

In his logbook, HP3 Instrument Lead Tilman Spohn gives us the latest updates regarding the InSight mission and our HP3 instrument - the 'Mole' - which will hammer into the Martian surface. read more