By Julia Berkman
Space. The unclaimed territory. The final frontier.
As technology grows in power and scope, space becomes less unclaimed and more explored. We may be light years away from the technology in Star Trek, but Melissa Rice, Assistant Professor of Geology, is part of a team that may get us closer: the Mars Curiosity Rover expedition.
Using her new Hololens, Rice sees a to-scale picture of the Curiosity’s vision and can receive any data the rover has picked up. The lenses send her a clear, 360-degree picture of what the Curiosity is seeing at that moment. From there, Rice can examine the rock formations in the rover’s vicinity and decide whether or not she wants to take samples.
When the rover was first sent up, Rice was part of a team stationed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Now, Rice is part of a team of over 400 scientists around the country who are given direct access to the rover’s data; each scientist takes shifts controlling the rover for their own research.
“We want to all see the same thing and be able to talk to each other about what we see,” Rice said in an interview with Western Today. “The intent eventually is for all 400 of us to communicate through the HoloLens.”
A cute and socially relevant sidebar: according to the social media representatives at NASA who control the Curiosity’s twitter account, the rover uses she/her/hers pronouns.
This rover isn’t actually designed to find life on Mars (sorry, Bowie). Instead, the Curiosity and her team are looking for evidence that, at one point, Mars was a hospitable planet.
In an interview with Seattle Times, Rice was positive about the evidence that there was water.
“We’ve found really compelling evidence that the rover’s landing site on Mars not only had water, but water that was not too salty, not too acidic, and that had the kinds of nutrients that might have been able to sustain life,” Rice said to Seattle Times reporter Katherine Long.
While this rover is looking to the past, sources from NASA have reported that in 2020 another rover will be sent, one that is looking for current life.
Western’s rover team isn’t just Rice alone, however. She often confers with her students on decisions about the Curiosity and her successor. Recently, Rice and her students had input in deciding where on Mars Curiosity’s younger sibling would land. If you go through a particular course sequence, you too can have input on Rice’s work with Curiosity. You can even earn credits for your work!
ABOVE: A “selfie” taken by Curiosity. Photo by NASA.