Nicolas Mangold is director of research at the CNRS, French National Center for Scientific Research, in the planetology and geodynamics laboratory at Nantes, France. After studies in geology, he joined the CNRS at Orsay in 2000, where he participated, notably, in the discoveries of the European probe Mars Express. He is currently on the team of scientists of Curiosity, the rover that landed on Mars in August 2012.