Galaxy Girls Page 9
“If life ever did appear on Mars, studies of its evolutionary steps will greatly help us understand the early evolution of life on Earth.”
Simonetta di Pippo
ASTROPHYSICIST
ITALY
BORN 1959 →
PROTECTING PLANETS FROM ALIEN LIFE
Simonetta di Pippo’s passion has always been space. She remembers watching the Moon landings when she was young, and found humankind’s ability to escape the limits of Earth very inspiring. Throughout her life she has been on the lookout for jobs that enable her to keep her passion alive.
Simonetta studied astrophysics at university and found herself working for the newly formed Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI). She has spent her career in the international aspects of space, working with different countries, including being in charge of human spaceflight for ASI and then the European Space Agency (ESA). All of this prepared her well for her current post as Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
UNOOSA encourages better international cooperation in space activities. Simonetta works tirelessly to help countries see how space can benefit humanity. By working together and using space for peaceful purposes, we can tackle some of today’s challenges such as climate change, energy creation and natural resources management.
UNOOSA also works to ensure that countries uphold the five international space treaties which set out the peaceful use of space. As different nations start making plans to explore the solar system again, these will be very important. One of the articles states that any exploration done by humans must avoid harmful contamination, so we do not introduce any diseases that could ruin a planet’s natural habitat.
Scientists agree that we should preserve the record of history that exists on other planets and not introduce life from Earth that might destroy or weaken any potential life there. Agencies around the world have worked together to write rules about making spacecraft free from anything potentially harmful. Any craft landing on Mars must be sterilized to remove microbes, and if it is going to a region where there might have been life the standards are even more stringent. However, if humans were to visit Mars, it could be extremely difficult to avoid contaminating the planet with Earth life, which raises the question of whether we should even send humans there, especially if we are trying to find signs of life.
Simonetta’s work keeps planets protected and space peaceful; it even tackles issues here on Earth. She also strives to help other women find their place in space science. She set up and is president of an organization called Women in Aerospace Europe, devoted to improving representation of women in aerospace and helping the youngest find their own career paths.
“I believe that true passion has no gender and focusing on your goals and dreams helps you to overcome gender and cultural boundaries.”
Ellen Stofan
GEOLOGIST
PLANETARY SCIENTIST
USA
BORN 1961 →
HOW DO WE GET TO MARS?
Ellen Stofan went to see her first rocket launch when she was just four. She watched as it exploded on the launchpad in a terrifying blast of power and flame, which, she says, is probably why she never wanted to be an astronaut. Instead she wanted to be an archaeologist, but one day her mother took her to a course she was studying on geology. Ellen was hooked, picking up rocks and looking to see what they could tell her. As she got older, she learned that you could study rocks from other planets. She knew that was what she wanted to do.
Ellen has had an amazing career, focusing on the geology of Venus, Saturn’s moon Titan, Earth and Mars. By studying the other planets in our solar system, scientists can understand more about how the Earth works; the ozone hole was first found by scientists mostly studying Venus. Ellen was appointed as NASA’s Chief Scientist in 2013, so she really knows her stuff, and during her time in the post she was key to developing long-term plans for getting humans to Mars.
This international task is being planned now, with the first steps already in place. Astronauts on the International Space Station are testing technology such as how to recycle urine into water and how to grow plants there. Recent Mars rovers have collected data about radiation, which is critical to understand if we are going to send humans there. Worldwide space agencies are working together on plans to put a small space station into orbit between the Earth and the Moon, where the science and technology needed for sending humans to Mars can be explored and tested. NASA and the European Space Agency are building the Orion spacecraft, which will one day be able to take humans on long missions. Together, the agencies plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.
Why send humans at all? We’ve sent rovers in the past and continue to do so; they are cheap and easy to fly. But Ellen is convinced we need to send scientists to Mars. Humans can read a landscape in detail, observe and reason, and work much more quickly than robots. They can select the right rocks to bring back to a lab, choose which investigations to do there and try to find the answers. Only by sending humans, Ellen believes, will we be able to definitively answer the question of whether there is, or has been, life on Mars.
WHY SEND HUMANS TO MARS?
“When you push . . . that’s when you get your leaps forward.”
Monica Grady
SPACE SCIENTIST
UNITED KINGDOM
BORN 1958 →
MOON ROCKS AND METEORITES FROM MARS
Monica Grady grew up in Leeds and spent her weekends in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, looking at the part rocks played in the history of its beautiful landscape.
Her interest in rocks led her to study chemistry and geology, and during her studies she examined some of the Apollo Moon rocks—2,415 samples brought back from the six Apollo missions that landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972.
Monica thinks that the Moon rocks are extremely beautiful. When geologists study rocks, they take a thin slice and polish it, so that under a microscope they can see what it is made from. Those from Earth are cracked, broken and rust-colored, where they have been battered by the wind and rain. The Moon is a very different place, with no atmosphere and no weather, and the surface has remained the same for most of its 4.5-billion-year life. The only changes are the craters formed by rocks that hit the Moon after hurtling through space. When Monica looked at thin slices of Moon rock she saw that they were deep and clear, full of bright colors—cerise, turquoise, pink, yellow, gray—with sharp outlines telling of their origins.
Monica has become a leading expert in meteorites, particularly those from Mars. Rocks traveling through space rain down on the Earth all the time, mostly from the asteroid belt. Small ones burn up in the atmosphere, which we see as shooting stars. Bigger ones which make it all the way to the surface of the Earth are called meteorites. Every few million years a large object, several miles in diameter, crashes into Mars, forming a huge crater and scattering rocks. Some of these are flung out into space, and slowly, many millions of years later, they hit the Earth, having survived the fiery plunge through the atmosphere. Monica is enraptured by these—of a meteorite she says, “If I break it open, it’s thousands of million years old; no one else has ever seen it and it tells you about the history of the solar system.”
For years Monica curated the UK’s collection of meteorites at the Natural History Museum, London, and is now working to make a place to store rock samples that will be brought back to Earth by future robots exploring the Moon, Mars or asteroids.
Monica has had an asteroid named after her in recognition of her brilliant work. Luckily for us though, it’s in a stable part of the asteroid belt and is very unlikely to become a meteorite and come anywhere near Earth.
“When you are working on a project, every team member is so important . . . Being able to work in a team where you have a common goal, now that is just really exciting and rewarding.”
Gerda Horneck
SCIENTIST
ASTROBIOLOGIST
GERMAN
Y
BORN 1939 →
DID LIFE ORIGINATE IN SPACE?
Gerda Horneck has always been at the forefront of scientific discovery, looking at science that others thought was just the stuff of fantasy. As technology develops we get closer to making fantasies into realities, to reaching planets we thought might be beyond our reach, and Gerda has helped to drive this big leap forward.
When she was a student, the idea that perhaps the first tiny organisms had come to Earth on a meteorite from another planet was difficult to believe. But the possibility of little hitchhikers from faraway planets fascinated her. Gerda has spent much of her career looking at how all forms of life cope with being in space.
Life on Earth is protected from harsh cosmic and solar radiation by the planet’s magnetic field. This deflects harmful particles that come streaming toward us from the Sun and other sources outside the solar system. But beyond the reaches of this protective bubble, several thousand miles above the surface of the Earth, there are much higher levels of radiation that can be lethal to humans.
For future astronauts traveling to Mars, this is a problem. With current technology the journey takes about nine months and once you reach Mars, you have to stay for about six months before turning for home, while the planets line up again in their orbits around the Sun. Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field like the Earth, and though the atmosphere provides some shielding, the radiation levels are about a hundred times greater than those on Earth. Scientists and engineers around the world are working on inventing materials to protect astronauts from these harmful rays.
Many people thought it was impossible for any living thing to survive in the harsh environment of space. Gerda was one of the pioneers in measuring the heat and radiation and their effects on living organisms. One of her experiments put samples of bacteria, fungi and ferns in a container on the outside of the International Space Station for almost two years, to see what happened and whether these organisms might be able to survive on a meteorite traveling through space. Some did.
Gerda has contributed so much to her field that she has had a bacteria named after her, Bacillus horneckiae, in honor of all her achievements. Her work has helped people understand more about where life might have come from, and will help keep astronauts safe when they venture out into the solar system.
“Astrobiology has become very popular, and I think maybe I have contributed a little bit to that.”
Anita Sengupta
AEROSPACE ENGINEER
USA
BORN 1977 →
LANDING SAFELY ON OTHER WORLDS
Anita Sengupta has been surrounded by engineering her whole life. When growing up she enjoyed helping her dad fix things around the house. One day when the house had lost water pressure, after hunting for the source of the problem, Anita found a burst water pipe. Her dad said, “You’ll be a great engineer one day!” He was right.
Throughout her career, Anita has not been afraid to take risks and has grasped every opportunity, even if it hasn’t been what she was expecting or has been something she knew little about. Her first projects involved working on rocket engines. She ran computer simulations of how the gases and liquids would behave, including work on Space Shuttle fuel tanks.
One day, she was approached by the team developing Curiosity, a rover that would land on Mars. They needed help working out the parachute design and thought Anita would be just the person. It would involve dropping out of helicopters into the desert to test the parachutes. She didn’t know anything about parachutes, but figured she had the right skills and could learn on the job—plus it sounded like a lot of fun.
The Martian atmosphere is a hundred times thinner than Earth’s and the parachutes would open at supersonic speeds. All those that had been used on Mars previously had failed to work properly, but no one had figured out why. Anita and the team came up with a new design, tested it over and over again, and when Curiosity landed on Mars, the parachutes worked perfectly.
When NASA started developing the Orion, the next generation of spacecraft that will fly humans to the Moon and Mars, Anita could see they were going to have similar issues, as the reentry speeds were so high. She got in touch and offered her expertise. The program managers were delighted to have her knowledge and Anita came on board.
On Orion’s first test flight on December 5, 2014, all the key design elements, including the parachutes, worked perfectly. They slowed the spacecraft to splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
Anita’s latest project is leading the design, development and operations of an experiment that will fly to the International Space Station. The Cold Atom Laboratory is designed to study very cold quantum gases, testing some of the most fundamental laws of physics and observing phenomena not possible on Earth. She still seizes every opportunity, solving problems to push the limits of space exploration.
“There’s a job for you even though it’s a really tiny field. If this is what you want to do, and as long as you’re motivated and trained, you’ll get it.”
The First Person on Mars
The first person to set foot on Mars is probably alive right now. That person might be reading this book. That person could be you.
Space agencies and private companies around the world are building spacecraft capable of sending humans to Mars, and working on ideas for how to land them there. By the 2030s we may see humans in orbit around the Red Planet, with landings to follow in the years ahead.
There are still, however, a lot of challenges and issues to overcome.
With current propulsion technology, a journey to Mars takes about nine months each way. The crew will need shielding from the harmful cosmic radiation that will bombard them throughout the journey. When they reach Mars their landing craft, and other cargo vehicles bringing supplies and equipment, will have to slow down and descend through Mars’s thin atmosphere to land safely on the surface.
The crew will have to survive for six months, while they wait for Earth and Mars to align in their orbits again before they can leave. They won’t be able to get back in an emergency so they will have to be entirely self-sufficient; and be able to respond to anything that goes wrong, fix equipment, deal with sickness or illness, grow their own food and recycle their waste. They might use Martian soil to create rocket fuel for their return, or turn it into useful things by 3-D printing.
When Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun, the distance from one to the other is about 248.5 million miles, and it takes radio signals twenty-four minutes to go between them. This means that astronauts on Mars won’t be able to speak directly to anyone on Earth, having to wait a long time for answers to come back from mission control. They would only be able to communicate with their families via emails or recorded messages.
Engineers and scientists need to figure out all these things before humans can walk on Mars. The crew of perhaps six people will be supported by a huge team worldwide, doing every sort of job imaginable, all dedicated to exploring Mars, carrying out scientific experiments, and bringing the crew back safely. They will need to be determined, patient and passionate about space exploration.
You can be a part of that team. With ambition, hard work and determination you can do anything you set your mind to. So what are you waiting for? The Red Planet is waiting for you . . .
Your Mission
So now you know that there’s nothing standing in your way if you decide you want to help humankind take its next steps in exploring the universe, or even go into space yourself one day. If you think that’s going to be your mission in life, you can start by filling out this plan:
>YOUR NAME
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>FLAG
>NATIONALITY
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>DATE OF BIRTH
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>WHO MOST INSPIRES YOU IN THIS BOOK
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The people you have read about have all sort
s of interests and careers. Tick the boxes below of the jobs that you think might help you on your mission into space:
ACTRESS
AEROSPACE ENGINEER
AEROSPACE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGIST
ASTRONAUT
ASTROBIOLOGIST
ASTROPHYSICIST
HIGH-ALTITUDE BALLOONIST
BIOCHEMIST
CHEMIST
COMPANY PRESIDENT
DOCTOR
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER
ENGINEER
ENTREPRENEUR
GEOLOGIST
LAWYER
MATHEMATICIAN
FLIGHT/MISSION DIRECTOR
NURSE
NUTRITIONIST
PARACHUTIST
PHYSICIST
PHYSIOLOGIST
PILOT/TEST PILOT