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Welcome to the Talking Geosciences podcast, brought to you by the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen.
Over the course of this series, we will hear staff and students discuss how their teaching and research is helping us understand and address contemporary global challenges, including sustainability and climate change.
Speaker 1 [00:00:03] This podcast is brought to you by the University of Aberdeen.
Speaker 2 [00:00:14] Hello and welcome to the Talking Geosciences Podcast, brought to you by the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen. Over the course of this series, we will hear staff and students discuss how their teaching and research is helping us understand and address contemporary global challenges, including sustainability and climate change. In this episode, Professor Javier Martin-Torres and his team of researchers from the Department of Planetary Sciences share their insights into the exciting field of planetary science and space exploration and tell us how space technologies are key to understanding climate change and other challenges we face today.
[00:00:57] So Javier, can you tell me a little bit about the Department of Planetary Sciences here at the University of Aberdeen?
Speaker 3 [00:01:03] Sure. The department of planetary sciences is an interdisciplinary department, our main aim is to study earth and planets. And for that we not only develop models, but we also develop instrumentation. Instrumentation that will go to planets like Mars, for example, we have an instrument that is right now operating on the surface of Mars in the Curiosity Rover, and we have another instrument operating on Mars too. For us is very important, what we call comparative planetology, where we kind of study other planets to learn more about our own planet. For example, we want to know what happened to the climate on Mars. Mars is a very dry planet. We want to know if that problem that Mars has in the past, that was a very humid place and become dry. We want to know if something like that can happen to our own planet and we want to avoid that so we can learn a lot about studying other planets, too. To learn about the evolution of Earth from past and future of it. And for that is for us it's also very important to know for simple things like how life emerged on the planet. That is something that we call astrobiology. Astrobiology is something that deals with life. How life is starting on, you know, on our planet. Is life possible in other planets? Can we find life on Mars for example? Can we find life on the lakes of Titan or under the surface of of ice, of Europa? So astrobiology is one of the main goals of the group too, we have several projects related to astrobiology and, I think it's a very appealing, appealing topic for for for young people, not only for young people. I am not so young and also very interested in the astrobiology because we deal with things like how life started on earth, can other forms of life, be it planets like Jupiter, Saturn. Can we find life in exoplanets? We're discovering exoplanets every day. I mean, there will be a lot of different worlds everywhere in the universe, and we want to know if life can be developed there and how it can evolve. And in the long term, we want to know also what we have with our own life. I mean, will we need to migrate to another planet. How big the climate of our planet will change? Are we going to be affected by that? So all these kind of topics are covered by the Department of Planetary Sciences in Aberdeen.
Speaker 2 [00:03:38] You mentioned there that you plan to have an instrument. You currently have one now, but you also plan to send one in in the future. Can you tell me specifically a bit more about about that instrument and the project that involves?
Speaker 3 [00:03:53] Yes, we have an instrument in the Curiosity rover on Mars is being operating in the surface of Mars for more than ten years now and is called RAMS it's a meteorological station. And so every time that we see, you see, the temperature, the pressure, the humidity on Mars, every time that you see the weather on Mars this is provided by the orbital meteorological station. So we have developed another instrument called HABIT that stands for HabitAbility, Brine Irradiation and Temperature, which is also a meteorological station. But in addition to that, we have an instrument that will provide for the first time liquid water on the surface of Mars. So this is going to be a very interesting instrument that will pave the way for the future exploration of Mars. It would provide the water that astronauts will need when they might stay on Mars, but the water that the greenhouse would need if we at some point land on the surface of the red planet.
Speaker 2 [00:04:48] That's fascinating. And Mracle, can you tell me a little bit about your involvement in this project?
Speaker 4 [00:04:54] Sure. Well, with respect to HABIT, we've been as a team, we've been working on for the last seven years, and we have dedicated a lot of time with the calibration of different sensors of the instrument. We have the facilities to to do the calibration in-house. So like from temperature testing to the one that Professor Javier was talking about, which produces the liquid water. So testing the sensors that measures how much liquid water is produced is one of the things which we want to quantify so that we can replicate in a large quantity when we send a bigger HABIT, for example, in the future. Along with that, this is a very common topic for our, our team habitability, looking for conditions of life, looking for signs of life, either present or past. So these are the topics that ties each and everyone in our team. Along that topic I'm also a, as my one project of the project I'm leading, I'm looking more on looking for signs of life in liquid systems, for example, in the ocean worlds in our solar system. That's the that's the mission. And we have a lot of places on Earth, extreme places, where life exist in liquid systems. So we develop instrumentation in the in the laboratory, take it to those places and measure parameters that can tell us what kind of life is present and how we can measure them. And that instrument I'm working on right now is called SAM it stands for Sub-liquid and Atmospheric Measurement. And along with that, it measures a lot of parameters, mostly in the liquid and the atmosphere surrounding it that can tell some science about the process of life and how it grows over time. And also, we are working on an extension of that, how to sample liquids in precise quantities so that can be transported and distributed to more, more and more downstream balance balances like movement. It could be developed by us or could be done by others. But this can give a concept of how an instrument can work in places with liquid, such as in the insulators, one of the moon of Saturn, Europa and one of Jupiter, and also in Titan, which has lakes of methane and ethane.
Speaker 2 [00:07:14] Well, that's really interesting. And it sounds to me like from what you've both described, is that this kind of work involves lots of perspectives. Javier you mentioned this is a strongly interdisciplinary group here you have an Aberdeen. Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, the different type of disciplines involved in the study? I mean, from microbiology to engineering to geosciences and things like that?
Speaker 3 [00:07:42] Yeah, actually this is one of the beauties of our department is that we cover a lot of different areas. It's also very challenging because we keep all learning every day. I keep learning about microbiology about geology. I'm a physicist by formation, and so we involve people from all different areas in general. I always say that there is always a space there is a space for everybody in space. And at the end in the future, if we land on the moon, if we land on Mars, we have an international space station, we're on the moon. We have we need everybody from all the different backgrounds. We will need medical doctors, we need the nurses, we need chemists, we need physicists, geologists, everybody, we need lawyers. Because at some point if we for example exploit resources for the Moon or Mars, I'm sure that there will be companies interested and that there would be countries interested in that if there is a value around that. So I'm sure that the lawyers would be needed in a space too. So all the different fields will have a contribution in space. So right now in our different projects, we have, we collaborate with microbiologists, biologists, a geologist. I mean, something very interesting that I found is that the students in geology, they never think that this space is for them. But ironically, all the principal investigation investigators of all the Mars missions in the past, they'd been geologists because all the previous missions to Mars, they were dedicated to explore or to understand the geology of Mars, to study the past of Mars. So yeah, this is a very multidisciplinary team and we're very proud of that. It's very challenging, but it's really nice. I also would like to highlight regarding HABIT that that something that we need if we go to Mars with astronauts in the future is resources. We need to produce resources in situ because it's very expensive to bring all the different sources from Earth to Mars. It's very heavy and expensive, so we need to produce as much resources as possible from the surface. So HABIT is this going to be the first, the first European instrument that will produce one of these important resources for the surface of the surface of Mars, which is water. And water is not only, it cannot be only used to feed astronauts or greenhouses. It can also be broken in hydrogen and oxygen. So we can also produce hydrogen and oxygen on Mars because we produce water. So I really think that our instrumental is a very important one. And of course, as I said before, it's the first European instrument that is the first in situ research instrument that will land on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 2 [00:10:36] Well, that's that's really interesting. And Jyoti and Thasshwin as a microbiologist and an engineer, can you tell me a bit about like what attracted you both to Planetary Sciences and how you know, you can apply your your background and your skills and knowledge to this to this area? Let's start with you Jyoti.
Speaker 5 [00:10:56] Oh, yeah, sure. So my PhD is actually funded by UKRI, UK Research and Innovation, and their main focus is understanding climate change, environment, biodiversity and ecology. So my broad subject is microbiology with the focus of astrobiology and Javier has already spoken and explained what is astrobiology. And I was always fascinated about studying signs of life on other planets. So how could biology help in this? Is biology in microbiology especially focussed on like DNA and our cells and the genetic material involved in it. And one of the hypothesis is that DNA is probably present in other planets, and that's a sign of life in the subsurface level. So with my background, on Earth I'm able to explore some extreme environments with this very limited amount of life and how do I get this extracted material out of it and sequencing and find the signs of life. So if I'm able to find it on Earth in extreme environments, we can use that and apply it to different planets as well. So and also that we can also understand in this way the biodiversity on Earth, which is also limited sometimes because of technology. But now with the advancements and different sequencing technology extraction kits, you know, we are able to explore even very limited environments like even Antarctica where they're finding life there. So I guess in that way we can apply to different planets and understand that's what fascinates me as a microbiology with advancement. And my research also can focus on carbon cycling, like if I explore the microbes in soil and I understand how they are involved in the carbon cycling on earth, we can understand the future impact on climate and how they would help affect, control all the gases that is affecting the global warming at the moment.
Speaker 2 [00:12:53] Great and Thasshwin, yeah, fom your perspective as an engineer, what attracted you to Planetary Sciences and can you tell me a little bit about, in terms of how you bring your kind of perspectives and skills to to these projects? Definitely, as Professor Javier mentioned, Planetary Sciences is a very interdisciplinary team and engineering plays a major role, especially with the development of instrumentation. So my background with engineering really helps me with the planetary sciences because it helps me to develop an instrument from a scientific point of view. So the instruments that I worked on with the HABIT instrument, so I was responsible for ensuring that any instrument that we send is not going to contaminate other planetary bodies. So this is something that's not just like an application, but biology and engineering both together. So we have something called plan to protection where we don't want to contaminate Mars with some sort of life that we send from Earth so that it would jeopardise the future missions. So this is an aspect of engineering and biology works together for a space mission. So this is an aspect that I work on. And here at the University of Aberdeen we have developed a clean room which is an ISO classify. That means that it's quite clean in terms of making sure that's no sort of contamination. So this is very important, especially that you need to develop instruments to make sure that it's done in a very clean environment and doesn't transport sort of microbes to other planets. So this is an aspect that we work on. And apart from that, I found as an engineer, from an engineering point of view, I developed instrumentation for environmental science. So we worked with the Harvard University on a project called Galileo. So where we want to study unexplained aerial phenomena. So for that we need a suit of different sensors that can study a range of parameters, something related to space weather, and also related to how it impacts the conditions on the Earth. So we have sent an instrument called Impact, which is a new form of particle control index magnetic anomaly that studies both particle radiation and also studies the magnetic field. And we also are developing a new novel system. It's called Eureka, an all-sky UV imaging system which tries to map the entire sky in a UV spectrum because all the images that we have for Earth based, Eaarth sky imaging is restricted to visible and infrared. But this is the first time we're going something below visible. We're going to go ultraviolet region. So these are the projects I also work on along with my team here.
[00:15:19] Great. That sounds really, really interesting. So from the perspective of somebody Javier, at school at the moment who's thinking about university and interested in planets in planetary sciences, what opportunities would there be to study some of these topics as a student here at Aberdeen? Firstly, as an undergraduate student doing a Bachelor of Science, for example.
Speaker 3 [00:15:42] In the School of Geosciences, we have two courses that are related to planetary sciences. So for children or for high school students, that would like to join us in the future. I would advise them to join our school. Here they will be exposed not only to those classes but also to all the engineers and scientists working in planetary sciences. We also have other people like Malcolm Hole or Alex Brasier who are also interested in planetary science. So in general, they will be if they come to the university here, they will be able to for example, to visit our labs to see what we are doing. They will be able to see one instrument that in a few years will be on Mars. That's something very nice to see. It's a nice experience to see something on earth that later we see in the pictures from the newspapers on Mars and in general, I think that this is a university that started this Department of Planetary Sciences only three years ago, but now is growing very fast in terms of the number of projects that we are involved. And I really advise people to come here to Aberdeen.
Speaker 2 [00:16:55] And then for somebody looking for something more advanced at a postgraduate level. You have a master's programme on planetary sciences, too. Can you tell me a little bit about that? And maybe also in terms of from a careers perspective, obviously the space sector is in the news a lot. It seems to be a lot of new organisations, both private and publicly funded, operating in this field. What do you think would be, you know, a good pathway for somebody who wanted to work in this in this sector?
Speaker 3 [00:17:27] Yes. I will start by the second question with the future careers, and I would like to mention that that there already has been more than 250 robotic spacecraft that have been launched to space, that there have been 24 humans on the moon and that there are more than 320 people have been to Space, the International Space Station. And well they always say about the times that we are living in I think that we are very fortunate for people that like space, we really live in the golden age of space exploration and right now more than 400 billions are moved by the global space economy. And the prediction is that it's going to grow to 1.1 trillion by 2040. So. There is that is there would be a lot of jobs related to Space. I mean, there will be there are a lot of companies and you have heard of Blue Origin and SpaceX and that there are a lot of companies that are even competing with the space agencies. So there is, there will be a lot of opportunities in the future to work in space. Space will be a big business in the next few years and it's growing fast. Every day we have launches to space. So that said, as I mentioned before, there is a space for everybody in space. And with that in mind, we have developed a Master's of Planetary Sciences at the University that is open to people that has a background in any field. Actually, we have in our master, we have people from microbiology, from biology, from geology, we have some physicists, we have engineers. So we have created a master that everybody can follow. I mean, we have tried to avoid all the mathematics that many times scare people. We have adapted a programme to every particular needs for every particular background. So we need the student to learn as much as possible within their capabilities or the backgrounds we will lead them to apply their knowledge to a space project. So at the end, I think that's a very nice programme for people who would like to develop a career in space. After the master there are two options two main options. One, the academic one or the other one could be went to work for a company. The academic one will require that you do a PhD and then in that sense there are many places in the UK where you can apply and there are many places worldwide where you can apply for PhD's. I mean, we also from time to time, we open PhD positions. For example, Jyoti is a PhD student with us. The other path is to follow the company path that I mentioned before. I mean, there is a growing economy in space where we will need people from any background. And the master of planetary sciences cover many different topics that go from geology, internal process of the earth to exoplanets to a space weather, to how you go from an idea to send an instrument to a space to develop that idea, to submit a proposal and to analyse the data. So we have, we have a course on astrobiology, for example, and on sustainability. And so it's a very wide and open programme that fits anybody that would like to apply for it. So you don't need to be a physicist or an engineer or a mathematician to apply for the master, you can have any background to apply for it.
Speaker 2 [00:21:13] And something I mean, I guess people probably associate historically space exploration with the United States and Russia and formerly obviously the Soviet Union, going back to, you know, the fifties and sixties. It seems now that this is a much more global sector. You mentioned some companies there and agencies. Do you see that continuing that trend continuing in terms of this becoming more of a global sector?
Speaker 3 [00:21:42] Oh, definitely. Actually, right now we have the United States, China, Russia, the European Space Agency, India, you know, Israel and Japan with capabilities to launch instruments to space. So this has changed a lot since the Cold War. We only had the United States and Russia. And then we have all these space companies that are developing their own rockets. Actually, NASA now is, for example, hiring companies to launch rockets for them. So the space sector, in terms of company is growing so fast that at some point they would be more important that they own that, that the space agencies or the national space agencies. So I really see an exponential grow the next year.
Speaker 2 [00:22:26] Well, that leads me on then to my final question. I wanted to ask each of you from your own personal perspectives or maybe disciplinary perspectives, what what are the most what are the most exciting things you hope to see happening in your area over the next, you know, ten or fifteen years? Why don't I start with with Thasshwin.
[00:22:47] So as Professor mentioned, space is becoming available to all so there are so many private sectors for getting into space. So engineering for space is going to be accessible to all, which was quite restricted to space organisation, it's going to be made accessible to a lot of people. So it's going to be like so much opportunities for engineers to start working on space missions and this is a big future I look forward.
[00:23:14] And Jyoti.
Speaker 5 [00:23:15] Yeah with respect to me, I would actually, it's my personal fascination that to see any microbe on earth that can survive Mars, Martian conditions or other or any cosmic conditions, you know, they are capable of sustaining and resisting any sort of radiations and random and harsh conditions. If there's anything that could do that, I would say that would be really great. And also finding any signs of life, particularly Mars at the moment, because that's where most of the exploration is happening. And finding any sign of DNA or any other life would be also great.
Speaker 3 [00:23:50] I suppose that's a question that fascinates lots of people. Yeah. As scientists, how probable do you think that is that there will be life found within even our solar system or beyond and in future years?
Speaker 5 [00:24:04] Well, because we are working on it, our probability should be high I would say. I would expect at least more than 80% considering Mars having a previous history of similar atmosphere with respect to Earth. I'm hoping there's at least some subsurface stored DNA in there, so my hopes are higher as a microbiologist. Let's see what the others tell.
Speaker 2 [00:24:30] Yeah. So Miracle. I mean, I suppose more generally, what is the area or the thing that you are you're most excited about either currently or in the in the near future?
Speaker 4 [00:24:38] Yeah. I mean, when you mentioned the timeline, fifteen years, that's a long time. I think a lot of students, high school students particularly, who are probably just having an initial idea about working in the space industry, they probably will be leading projects, they'll probably be managing stuff during during those times. So me, I'm particularly interested in exploration as an as an explorer, and I would like to see humans going to Mars. That's one big thing. And also everyone is interested in looking for life. So any sign of life, anything that is passed would be good. Especially I'm interested in more than the liquid elements of Saturn and Jupiter's moons. So if if even if those mission commissioned, and going there and landing and hopefully sailing or drilling the ice and going to into the and the subsurface, lakes or subsurface oceans, that is a big technological advantage that that will open a lot of space and a lot of new missions that can go in the future. So this is just still in a still in sci-fi phase, but that will be a reality, hopefully in the future.
Speaker 2 [00:25:49] Yeah. And Javier I'll leave you to to sum up then, what's your big hope or what gets you excited at the moment about, in Planetary?
Speaker 3 [00:25:58] I will talk about it in two parts, so I would talk first about before 2040, so in the next in the near future. So in the near future, I see the three biggest achievements that we will have, this one is the landing on the moon with astronauts. That's something that didn't happen since the last 50 years. So I think now it's time to land on the moon. This is it's going to be a great achievement is not as simple as it looks, because we when we look back, we saw that there in the in the 69, 69 and the seventies, we were able to land. But now it's not so simple. So this is going to be a big technological achievement. At some point we will have an international space station around the moon, which is called it will be called Lunar Gateway, where we have a lot of experiments. We will prepare to the big jump to go to Mars. And I think that this a very interesting project from a scientific point of view is the Mars sample return. So we have a mission now on Mars that is taking samples that will be sent back to Earth in the next years. I mean, we will analyse Mars samples on Earth for the first time ever. We may discover that there was life on Mars, so that would be a great achievement. So we will see that from from that for the near future. I'm not so optimistic in the sense I don't think that we will reach Mars before 2040. I think that we will reach it later. I don't see Mars as as a place to escape from Earth. I see Mars as a place for research. And I think that if there was life on Mars in the past, which is highly likely, I think that there must be life in the subsurface. So my hope is certainly in the next 30/40 years we can find life under the surface of Mars, and maybe we can find some biosignatures from the big amount of exoplanets that we are covering every day. The problem with that is that that I mean, if you discover life, you do need to have big evidence. And so I find very difficult that everybody will believe that the planet that these many light years away has life. We can find some some signals that there could be life there. But I find very difficult to to convince anybody that there's life. But still, it may be possible that we find some biosignatures in exoplanets that will excite everybody. Maybe we can try communication with the planet. We can see and try the signals and see if they reply back. But still they are so far away that this is going to take centuries until we get their signal back. But so I think that those are the most the most relevant technological and scientific challenges or results that we have in the future. I mean, I say challenges and achievements because they actually are both together. So even analysing the samples from Mars is going to be a challenge and so that we can say that it's life and not in the samples. But I really foresee a very nice future for young generations for students that are listening to us that would like to pursue a career in the space or planetary sciences. I think there is a lot of work to be done and I really think that these are going to be, that this golden age of exploration will last for many decades.
Speaker 2 [00:29:32] You've been listening to the Talking Geosciences Podcast from the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen. For more information about our teaching and research, visit our website www.abdn.ac.uk/geosciences or follow us on Twitter, on Facebook.
Speaker 1 [00:30:02] This podcast is brought to you by the University of Aberdeen.