Articles

Part 6 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

Steve Vance is still in the middle of planning discussions at JPL for a potential Europa mission that could launch as early as 2020. In early 2012, the team he’s on finished developing three different mission designs with three different vehicles—an orbiter, a flyby (like Voyager and Galileo) or a lander mission—that they’d pitched in a report to NASA agency brass the previous May.

Part 5 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

As he watched Florida recede in the distance, thoughts of the journey behind and the one lying before Chris German filled a hopeful mind. “Deep joy,” describes German, reflecting on his outlook at the start of the expedition.

Part 4 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

Nineteen seventy-seven was the kind of a year that only comes around once every 176 years. That’s how often the outer planets of our solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune… sorry Pluto) line up just right in their orbits around the sun to allow for a spacecraft to slingshot past all four of them.

Part 3 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

Hydrogen sulfide is a poison gas that’s lethal for humans even in very low concentrations. Yet, this compound—two parts hydrogen, one part sulfur—turned out to be the food source for bacteria that were driving an entirely new ecosystem.

Part 2 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

Just as it helps Chris German answer riddles about the origin of life on Earth, life’s surprising hardiness gives astrobiologists cause for hope in finding life on seemingly inhospitable hells off Earth, too. Among researchers on the search for those hells is Steve Vance, a member of the Science Definition Team for NASA’s Europa missions.

Part 1 of a 6-part series, originally produced as the thesis for my Master's from MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. Recently published in Astrobiology Magazine.

This series tells the story of humankind’s efforts to understand the origins of life by looking for it in extreme environments where life thrives without relying on the sun as an energy source. It follows an oceanographic expedition to the Mid-Cayman Rise, led by Chris German of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NASA’s efforts to plan a future mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. By understanding how life can live without the sun, we may discover how life began on our planet and whether or not Earth is the only place in the universe capable of supporting a biosphere.

R/V Atlantis, morning before departure to the Mid Cayman Rise. Image Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)

On February 17, 1977, Tjeerd van Andel of Stanford University and Jack Corliss of Oregon State took a few last breaths of the South Pacific air before closing the basketball hoop-sized hatch of the research submersible, Alvin.

Banking his Boston duck tour boat in a gradual U-turn on the Charles River, the gray-goateed helmsman and tour guide known as Duck Pin guided the vehicle through the glassy water toward the Longfellow Bridge, his bowling shirt flapping gently in the breeze. “And there, behind those buildings about three blocks down on Broadway,” said Duck Pin, “was the site where NASA wanted to build its Mission Control Center, right next to MIT in the Kendall Square area.”