Joern Helbert has been a staff scientist at the German Aerospace Center since 2003 and is head of the “Planetary spectroscopy group?. He is an expert in planetary remote sensing using infrared techniques. He is involved in several space missions including BepiColombo, MarsExpress, VenusExpress, the NASA MESSENGER mission to Mercury and the JAXA Hayabusa 2 sample return mission. He is Co-Private Investigator of the MERTIS instrument on BepiColombo.