Unravelling Martian Methane Mysteries in the Canadian Arctic

An image of our ABB methane detector deployed at Gypsum Hill on Axel-Heiberg Island in Nunavut. Alex's work here showed that the variability in a measured methane signal might be able to tell us more about our distance from the source than the total amount of methane does. This is important for how we might prospect for methane seeps on Mars. 

Oh, and look at that view!
Sometimes it's not just the results of our investigations that take our breath away.

by Alex Innanen

Almost three years ago now (and wow, time really flies) I spent three weeks in Nunavut, which you can read all about here. I talked a little in that post about why I went up and what sort of work I was doing there. But the work did not end when I landed back in Ottawa (or got back to Toronto after an extended weekend at the cottage). No, I then spent the next several months going “I guess I need to write this up in a paper somehow.” This was complicated by a few things – the fact I hadn’t ever written a paper based on fieldwork (nor read many), the fact that the results were not super clear cut, and some good old fashioned procrastination. But I ended up presenting the work a few times, including at my yearly research evaluation meetings and at a couple conferences, and it started to come together into some kind of story.
 
When I took methane measurements, I let the instrument ingest the air passing over for ten minutes, and the instrument took a measurement every second over this time period. This meant I ended up with what I took to calling a ‘spiky plot’ of hundreds of methane measurements over that ten-minute period. I noticed two things in these ‘spiky plots’. The first was that I could find the average methane concentration over that period, and that the average methane concentration tended to be highest right next to the source of the methane and drop off as I moved away downwind – typically the way you expect methane (or any gas) to work, which if nothing else meant the instrument was working. The other thing I noticed was that the variation in how spiky the spiky plot was was also higher right next to the methane source. That is to say, the methane signal varied over a much larger range when I was closest to the source, and had a much smaller range further away or upwind of the source. You can see this in the three graphs below which I took at one of the springs.

Three spiky plots. You can see that the upwind measurement has not only a lower average concentration (dashed line) but also is much, much less spiky (solid line) than the other two. Note that the y-axis is much larger on the 'Inside Wolf Spring' measurement because I saw such huge spikes of methane!

I saw this same phenomenon with the variability getting higher closer to the source even when I wasn’t moving in the exact same direction as the wind. At Wolf Spring I only moved in a (mostly) straight line in the wind direction, but at Gypsum Hill I took two sets of measurements – one along the wind direction, and one at a diagonal to the wind direction. This second set of measurements suggested that getting more data at various locations around the methane source could give us a clearer understanding of how methane behaves in a two-dimensional grid around such a source.

To that end, I sent the instrument back up to the arctic last summer in the company of an MSc student from McMaster with detailed instructions to get me a grid of measurements around Wolf Spring. My procrastination had achieved one thing – I was able to add this new dataset into my paper. And I’m glad I was! From the 2024 measurements I was able to see to impact both distance from the source and the angular distance I was from the wind direction had on the methane signal. (I’ve visualised the geometry simply below in case it’s not clear what I mean, where θ is that angular distance from the wind direction.)

Now, in 2022 I did not have any way of accurately measuring the wind direction. Instead I used a technique which is actually similar to how the Phoenix Lander did it, wherein I held up a roll of flagging tape and watched which way the wind blew it. In 2024 we were a bit more high-tech: the master’s student had access to a small weather station which gave me actual numbers for my wind direction. Knowing the position of the instrument at each measurement and the wind direction at the time of the measurement, I was able to get the distance from the source (d) and the angle of the instrument to the wind direction (θ) and combine these (d/cos(θ)) and compare this value to the average methane concentration and the variability in the measurements. I found that both fell off with increasing d/cos(θ) (or distance from the center of the methane plume), but that the variability actually fell off in a slightly more predictable way.  

Okay, you may be thinking, this is all mildly interesting but what does this have to do with planetary science? Well, as has been discussed on this blog before, there’s a lot we don’t know about martian methane. One of the unanswered questions is where it’s coming from – both in the sense of what is producing it, but of more interest to this work, the actual location from which it is being emitted. We know that we see methane plumes on Mars, but we don’t know how long they last, how the behave or, again, where they’re coming from. If we did send an instrument to Mars to investigate this, we could use what I learned in the arctic to determine what that instrument should look like and also how we should use it to find the source of these methane plumes.

I learned that the variability is a better indicator of how close we are to a methane source. The variability I saw in my spiky plots is over very short timescales, thus our hypothetical instrument should be able to make high frequency measurements to capture changes over these short timescales. I also learned that knowing the wind direction is pretty important, so our instrument should be combined with some kind of wind sensor. My measurements were taken from various locations around the methane source, so having our instrument on something that can move like a rover (or even a drone!) may be more useful than if the instrument just stands still.

There’s more I could say about this, but I don’t entirely want to spoil my paper (coming soon to an Acta Astronautica near you!). Even though it took nearly three years, it turns out there was quite a bit to learn from a few slap-dash methane measurements in the very distant north. 

To read the paper, visit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525003212

Poster Sessions and All That

An image (Figure 1, courtesy of Elisa) of one of the many buildings which housed the 2024 American Geophysical Union Conference in December of last year. The conference is massive, overwhelming even! Yet, it provides a venue where even disciplines with small numbers of scientists can meet and discuss their science. From Elisa: "There was no mistaking this was the place. So many poster tubes and people piled up waiting for the light to change."

 by Elisa Dong

Going to conferences… is fun! 

The attendance at conferences is a significant part of a graduate student experience. These are the places where we showcase our work, get feedback, and check out what’s up and coming in the field. Sometimes, conferences take place at exotic locales, and sometimes, they may be as mundane as “the place near the airport that is extremely inconvenient to take public transport to.” AGU 2024 fell somewhere in between, in Washington D.C., capital of the United States of America.

Given that the flight time and drive time were not too dissimilar, my boyfriend and I opted to drive down to save on costs, a very real consideration for going to conferences! While unplanned, we drove through some fascinating geological features going through Pennsylvania, dotted with various electoral signs on the way down. We stopped at a fairly mediocre cash-only brunch place, and saw snow and horses for most of the way down. Entering the city, the traffic went from a quiet one lane drive to cars changing lanes without signals, and mysterious roundabouts with confusing signage. Once at our hotel, we spent half an hour figuring out the parking situation, grabbed some food downstairs (with the best free bread we had ever had), then promptly went to bed. 

AGU is about a 5 day conference (see Day 1 in Figure 1!), and I had a poster on the first day and a presentation on the third. My presentation went well, and I was able to touch base with a coauthor of mine to confirm a few key concepts for a paper I was writing (I did this by tapping his shoulder to say hello). I had thought I would have the entire last day off to wander the city. As it turns out, there was an entire session dedicated to planetary defense and impactors that I had missed in my schedule, so I slunk back into the conference center to hear about the modelling work that was ongoing (Figure 2 shows once of the very few photos I took at the museum). 

Figure 2. Ducks at the museum! I also took photos of many many rock displays, but the local fowl section was also very cool!

It’s worth noting I met up with several other colleagues who do similar things – checking on some scientific concepts that were their specialties, sharing ideas for future works, and generally touching base. Despite running around to sessions, visiting random posters, picking up free ducky keycaps, the networking and chatting with more distant coworkers and future collaborators is one of the best things about a conference for me. Getting on a zoom call or sending an email is just not the same. 

The collaborative and productive nature of conferences was really highlighted by the poster I had up. I made the questionable choice of wearing heels that first day, anticipating being able to sit and walk around. Unlike some other conferences I had attended in the past, this poster session was huge. Having mine on the first day, I didn’t realize just how well attended it would be! 

So instead of being able to kick back and look at other posters during my session, I was glued at my poster well past the closing time and completely missed seeing an old colleague just a few posters down the aisle. I received a large amount of feedback, including kind critiques and thoughtful questions that have lingered as I consider the limitations of my work. Folks stopped by to offer resources and model simulations, encouraged me to bring up my work to a larger group (this has happened! I gave a presentation and received more positive feedback and further suggestions), and all the good stuff. I met many new people, whose names I wish I had taken down, including some who might be future reviewers of my work that gently pointed out the critical questions that I might want to consider as I continued working on the project. I explained a few concepts to a child attending the conference with family, and shared in their excitement over the awesomeness - that modelling that can help us explain our real-world observations. 

I was also happy to meet up with my previous supervisor and bring him up to speed on what I was working on, and to hear his assessment of the current state of his field and view of the conference.
Some cool things I got out of AGU 2024:

• An invitation to ask about a summer internship position (this didn’t end up working out, but it definitely expanded my thoughts)
• Meeting undergraduate students! It’s always a delight to see what cool things they’re working on, and we’ve spoken again since about work related matters
• A suggestion to present my work at an internal MSL meeting despite not working on data from the team directly
• The potential for writing a paper for a special edition (this also didn’t work out, but the procedure has been established and might be something to touch up again in the future)
• A visit to NASA Goddard! I’ve never been to a NASA Centre before, and I was able to plan it with one of my coworkers based out of there and get approvals just in time! It was great to see what folks are doing behind the scenes, the huge clean rooms with possibly over a hundred HEPA filters installed (Fig. 3), and the old-fashioned, yet extremely functional, measuring tools they used
• A late night ice-cream hangout with an online friend who forewarned me about the roundabouts
• More ice-cream and a super toasty paper fill menu on a busy Friday night when every other place was packed
• An experience (and the post-experience) at Coffee Republic. I have never enjoyed ads in my inbox so much before. The food was delightfully greasy, the coffee solid, and it was fun to hear the workers chat about their relationships candidly
• Going to the Christmas market! Two of them even!
• Barrel and Chuck, the two plushies I picked up on the way back at a Cracker Barrel. (Barrel is the lab’s new emotional support capybara, and has a lavender scented heat pack inside him! All of us in the office where he lives happen to like lavender, so it works out great. He occasionally moves from desk to desk to provide extra support)
• And, an incredible amount of useful feedback for my own work + inspiration from other projects in the future!

Figure 3. The HEPA filter wall. Incredible. What else can you spot in the room?

AGU is one of the stranger conferences out there. It is a huge conglomeration of what is really 30+ conferences that are distantly related all mashed into one location. While it makes it easy to pop into a session about say, climate change or quantum physics, it’s not necessarily planned out in a way that potentially related sessions don’t interfere. Add on thousands of attendees, and you might be feeling a bit claustrophobic and getting more exercise than planned as you trek from one building to another. Something to keep in mind. It may be better for some folks to target more niche conferences to get the same return.

We drove back as well. My eyes are still recovering from being blasted with 8 hours of dry air.

The Art of Collaboration

I can't emphasize this enough: Science is a team sport! Collaborations are key to all that we accomplish at PVL. Often, the effort of trying to develop a better understanding of our solar system can be difficult or frustrating. Working with others not only makes this more fun and social, but those connections can often get you unstuck or send you down a path of discovery you didn't even know existed. All it takes is the right conversation to spark something new! Above: A view from the Nydeggbrücke, a 19th century bridge over the Aare that connects the old and new parts of Bern.

by Conor Hayes

I’ve now been with the PVL for almost five years. In that time, I’ve really come to appreciate the power of a collaboration, particularly with people outside of the lab. I first got a taste of this following the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) in 2022. There, I was presenting some of the work that I had been doing as part of my Master’s thesis. In that work, I was examining how small-scale terrain may influence surface temperatures in the Moon’s permanently-shadowed regions (PSRs) in ways that we can’t currently observe from orbit. To do so, I was using a “Gaussian rough surface” to represent the interior of a PSR. While Gaussian roughness is a decent model for planetary surfaces over smaller regions, it’s a simplified model as it ignores larger structures like craters.

After my presentation, I got a DM on the conference’s Slack workspace from David Minton, an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University. In his message, he told me that he had been developing a Cratered Terrain Evolution Model (CTEM) that can create realistic lunar terrains at small scales, and asked if I would be interested in collaborating. Over the next several months, we merged his CTEM outputs with my illumination and temperature models to create a paper that was significantly better than the version that was in my Master’s thesis.

This past February, another collaboration offered a new experience to me. During my PhD, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the transport of volatile molecules like water across the lunar surface. One of the more popular models for doing so assumes that molecules undergo a series of thermally-driven jumps across the surface until they are either destroyed or trapped by cold temperatures. The temperature required for one of these jumps to begin is determined by a parameter known as the “desorption activation energy.” It is arguably the most important component of the model, but its value is not well understood, particularly if you want to look at molecules other than water.

There are several ways that one can attempt to determine the value of a molecule’s activation energies, but nobody at PVL has the expertise or the equipment necessary to do so. We could just use the values in the literature while making note of their limitations, but I didn’t feel like that was the right approach. Instead, we’ve been working with Liam Morrissey and his team at Memorial University on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of desorption, which can be used to estimate the activation energies for various molecules on different surfaces without having to put together a complex experimental setup.

As part of this collaboration, I was invited to participate in a workshop at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland. This workshop was the first meeting of ISSI’s Multi-Scale Understanding of Surface-Exosphere Connections (MUSEC) International Team. At this point in my graduate career, I’ve been to many conferences, so I thought that I knew what I was getting into. It didn’t take long for my expectations to be proven entirely incorrect.

What rapidly became apparent was that a workshop is a much more collaborative environment than a conference. Rather than a rigid schedule of short talks and even shorter Q&A sessions, each presentation was more like a conversation between all the attendees. About half an hour was given to each person, not because they were expected to speak for that long, but to give ample time for discussion during and after each talk.

I had been worried because I was coming in without many actual results. Instead, the presentation I had prepared was mostly a listing of open questions that I would like to address in the final version of my model. Not exactly the kind of content that would attract much attention at a conference, but I had been assured that it was appropriate for a more informal venue such as this one. Still, I was haunted by the ever-present specter of imposter syndrome, particularly as a last-minute addition to a group of people who were already familiar with each other.

After the week’s agenda had been updated to include me, I noticed that 45 minutes had been allocated for me. Before I began, I joked that I we would definitely be taking our afternoon coffee break early, as I couldn’t imagine a world in which my set of questions could possibly consume that amount of time. As it turns out, if you start listing unanswered questions in a room full of people with the expertise to answer those questions, it inspires a lot of discussion. I was told afterwords that my presentation was exactly the kind of content that this workshop had been designed to focus on, which was very reassuring to hear given my initial uncertainty about whether I should be there at all.

Outside of the workshop itself, the MUSEC leadership made an effort to foster a sense of community with group lunch and dinner outings, which allowed everyone to get to know each other outside of our work. It didn’t take more than a day or so before I stopped feeling like an outsider. Bern itself is a beautiful city, and I hope to be able to explore it more during the next in-person MUSEC workshop next year (if writing my dissertation isn’t consuming too much of my time by then!). 

 The aftermath of a successful workshop: a completely inscrutable whiteboard.

 

Rodeos and Regolith: A Week at LPSC 2025

The PVL crew at LPSC 2025 in The Woodlands, Texas. From left to right, we have MSc students Milena and Abby followed by PhD students Conor and Alex. There's nothing like your first scientific conference! (I still remember LPSC 2004 fondly.) Below, Milena Markovich, one of our new MSc students reflects on their experience this past March.

 by Milena Markovich

Running through Toronto Pearson Airport a punctual three hours before my flight, I could hardly focus on where I was going. Making my way through security, I placed all my items and luggage on the conveyor belt, running on autopilot. My mind was racing with anticipation, a perfect storm of excitement and anxiety. When I finally arrived at my gate, I double checked the display by the desk – destination: Houston, Texas. I settled into my seat and began some last-minute marking before I would eventually arrive at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. 

Once Abby arrived at the gate, we began discussing the conference in an excited flurry. What would it be like? Would our poster sessions go well? Which sessions and speakers were we most excited for? In a coincidence which perfectly exemplifies the small world of planetary science, sitting across from us was a former colleague of our supervisor: Dr. Livio Tornabene. After some friendly conversation, I asked Dr. Tornabene if he had any advice for a first-time conference goer like myself. His advice echoed in my mind for the entire week ahead – remember to take breaks, there’s so much going on that you can’t possibly “do it all”.

Although this was fantastic advice, after my first day at LPSC 2025 I realized I would certainly have a problem following this piece of advice. Sitting in on sessions exploring the icy moons of Jupiter, the minerology of Mars and astrobiology, I knew this was a learning opportunity of which I could not miss a single second. What followed was a week of 7AM mornings, quick jogs across the Macy’s parking lot to make it to the first session of the day, and long evenings spent meeting other graduate students, exploring The Woodlands and even Houston.  

The welcoming nature of everyone I met was a warm embrace into the planetary science community. In Texas of all places, so far from home and campus, I encountered other graduate students from York University. Through quick chats between sessions and social bar nights with loud “cheers!” going around, I gained a deeper sense of community. I met other students and scientists from across the world – offering friendly conversation at lunches, fascinating discussions about their research and helpful doses of career advice and mentorship.

In between the lecture presentations, bonus workshops and poster sessions I spent many hours walking the canal by the conference hotel with lab-mates, exploring local restaurants (failing miserably to order a sufficient amount of barbecue for three people), even managing an excursion to the Houston rodeo. From experiencing Cracker Barrel for the first time or exploring the wacky food booths at the Houston rodeo with my newfound friends, I gained so many wonderful memories outside the conference hall. This attitude of never saying “no” to a restaurant, extra session, or fun field trip allowed me to develop friendships with York students I had hardly seen around campus, and with other scientists from across the country, continent and world.

Thus, it seems I went directly against Dr. Tornabene’s advice. That is certainly not to say that his advice was not perfectly sound – however, as a first-year graduate student surrounded by the passionate, excited and welcoming nature of this community for the first time, this advice seemed equally impossible for me to follow.

Following discussions of LPSC 2025 being the last LPSC conference in this capacity, I knew I had done the right thing by trying to soak up as much of the experience as I possibly could. While career paths can be winding – starting and stopping at different destinations than we may expect – my time spent immersed in the planetary science community has been both professionally fulfilling and has provided me with many treasured moments with friends. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in this conference, both by presenting my research at the poster session and absorbing all the fantastic work being done in planetary science, while building meaningful relationships and connections within the community. 

Throughout my week at LPSC 2025 I learned much more than I could have hoped. From presentations on the geophysics of Mars and icy moons to lunar volatiles and minerology. Of equal value, I learned what a country steak is, had fried okra for the first time and experienced the epic highs and lows of a Texan rodeo. At the end of the day, there are indeed times when we all make the mistake of not following perfectly good advice. Returning home from Houston exhausted, yet full of knowledge, inspiration and fond memories, I’m glad I made that mistake.

A Niche Conference?

 Being at a conference is like being thrown in the deep end; it's like drinking from a fire-hose; it's so unlike anything else in academia that water-based analogies just don't describe it accurately! It's an even more impactful experience if we're talking about your first scientific conference or your first time diving into a new field where unexpected connections can be made (e.g. discovering a new kind of Phoenix!). This week, Kevin shares his experience of attending a planetary science conference with a narrow scope: the 10th Mars Conference.

by Dr. Kevin Axelrod

Back in July of this past year (which is 2024, for those of you reading this in the future), the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory of York University traveled to Pasadena, California to attend and present at the 10th Mars Conference, hosted by Cal Tech and organized by USRA. This conference is not held every year, usually just once or twice a decade and therefore had some big-shot attendees from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere. In total there were nearly a thousand participants.  Given that it talks about the study of a single non-Earth planet in the universe, I considered it to be niche - something that is highly specialized, highly technical, and extremely important to some but obscure to many.

So, coming from an Earth-oriented atmospheric sciences background (I got my Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences, and my research focused on bioaerosols) at first, I found it very difficult to fit in.  In just about every single conversation, (including with graduate students, who are supposedly “less experienced” than a postdoc) I found myself to be the least experienced participant. Typically, the other person did 99% of the talking, and, when responding to someone, I would just say stuff like “Okay”, “Hmm… interesting”, “I see”, “Alright, sounds good”, and “Cool”. I had difficulty contributing meaningful thoughts to conversations because I simply did not know enough.

I immediately noticed something in an opening plenary given by one of the keynote speakers, someone highly experienced that I would think of as a “big-shot.” In his presentation, he discussed a measurement technique and the missions that have performed these measurements. Then, in the question session, a member of the audience playfully ridiculed him for not including a shout-out of the Phoenix lander for a similar measurement that it had performed.  He genuinely apologized, stated that he is a “big fan” of the Phoenix lander, and that its exclusion was an oversight.

Meanwhile, I sat there thinking: “Hmmm… Phoenix.  To me, Phoenix is a city in Arizona, a bird in Harry Potter, and the mascot of a professional ultimate frisbee team based in Philadelphia (above).” Don’t ask me how I somehow know that third one. 

This was one of many instances where I felt like I should have signed up to be the guy filling the water coolers instead of an actual presenter. Other scientists there seemed to know every single Mars mission like the back of their hand – something that I should study more.  People there knew all the important (and more obscure) studies, both legacy and recent.  

This made me feel like a vegetarian at my uncle Bob’s dinner table.  For background, my uncle Bob loves hunting, and he butchers deer in his garage.  Oh, okay, maybe “a fish out of water” would have been a more recognizable simile – Bob loves fishing too. 

Niche conferences are nothing new to me: back in 2023 I attended a conference called the International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere, at Berkeley. There perhaps 150 participants (given its small size, John might call this a “workshop”, not a conference), and the title said it all.  Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere was the only topic discussed.  I did my Ph.D. on bioaerosols, so my research fit in perfectly with this conference, and there were many other scientists there who were also doing work on bioaerosols.  

I talked with these people like we were equals: I knew what they were talking about and vice versa.  But, even in a “niche” conference like this, with relatively few attendees and a narrow range of subject material, there were also several presentations that struck me as completely new – things I have not researched before, worked on, heard of, or imagined.  While I vibed with a good number of presentations, there also were many presentations that were so new to me that I was completely lost by the second slide in the slide show – giving me the feeling that I was having at 10th Mars in Pasadena. Even in a conference where I have a good grasp of much of the research, there was still plenty of research that made me feel like a “newbie”.

Remembering this conference, I now realize that there may not exist a conference that is too niche. Even when narrowing down the range of topics, science is still extremely broad, and even more extremely detailed.  Because of this, I find it difficult to call myself an “expert” in a broad field like atmospheric sciences, even though I have a Ph.D in this topic.

So, 10th Mars reminded me of something critical: the most important skill in a scientific career isn’t knowing everything there is to know in a field. It is the ability to push outside of your comfort zone and learn new things. Even though you may have a Ph.D, you can never stop being a student. Even though 10th Mars was perhaps a bit uncomfortable for me (because of my relative lack of experience in the field compared to other participants), I learned more material in those four days than maybe I ever had before in a four-day span.

The message of this blog post is this: I would highly recommend all early-career scientists to not just attend conferences in your field of expertise, but conferences that are slightly (or more than slightly) outside of your area of expertise. And to be honest, middle- and late-career scientists should probably be doing the same as well. It will challenge you to learn new things, meet new collaborators, and in doing so conceptualize new ideas for research that you may never have had if you had just stayed in your typical lane – the one that you were trained in when you did your M.S. or Ph.D.  

A few final thoughts:
1.    I need to find a way to drag some other members of the PVL out to a conference with more Earth-based atmospheric sciences!  I guess the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in Washington DC is a good place to start (three of us were there last year!).
2.    “Phoenix” now includes the name of a NASA Mars lander from 2008 as a definition in my brain-dictionary!
3.    Maybe it’s finally time to call uncle Bob and ask what’s up after all these years. I have recently heard that he makes a mean chaga tea. Color me intrigued.

Au Revoir and Until Next Time, my Fellow PVLers

 Dr. Charissa Campbell, at York University's fall convocation with a member of the PVL class of 2050.

by Dr. Charissa Campbell

Well, after many years with the PVL team where I completed both my MSc and PhD, it is time to say goodbye. I just finished my walk across the stage at convocation in mid-October. Even though I may not be there in-person any longer, I don’t feel like my time is fully done with the PVL crew as I’ve made amazing friendships and collaborations. I’ve learned a lot about myself during these times and I am grateful for the opportunity to pursue my degrees with the group and how that work granted me my dream job where I live now, Maryland, USA. I’ve been fortunate enough to land a postdoctoral research position at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre continuing work on the Martian atmosphere. But here, I am looking at a unique type of dust storm rather than the clouds I studied at York.

 

Recently I was asked about my favourite memory with the PVL group and to be honest there were just too many to pick one. My work with the Curiosity team helping to manage environmental operations was high on the list (see: So Long and Thanks for All the Clouds)  but so was developing an outreach event for the Ontario Science Centre (see: The Rover Exploration Challenge). All the travel I got to do to places like Geneva, Switzerland; Paris, France amid others was where the real networking happened so I could feel like a true Martian with other scientists while also practicing my public speaking skills. I also got the amazing opportunity to visit the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon Saskatchewan and not only do lab experiments at this amazing facility, but got to brave the -40 C weather that I grew up with and do not miss (see: The Continuing Adventures At the Canadian Light Source). I managed to use all this traveling to complete an item on my bucket list; visiting every Canadian province. I completed this when my colleague, Grace, and I traveled to Newfoundland to complete field experiments for the MAPLE instrument (see: There and Back Again, A MAPLE Tale ). Lastly, my time working on an internship at the Canadian Space Agency was also a big highlight and a dream of mine that I am still in shock in came true (see: Completing an Internship at the Canadian Space Agency).  I could go on and on about the amazing experiments and experiences I’ve had with this group. I’ve had an amazing 20s and now I am ready for my 30s and my career.

 

Even though I walked the stage in mid-October for my PhD, I actually left Toronto for Maryland back in November 2023. I was able to complete my dissertation revisions while also doing work here at NASA Goddard so that I could ensure a good salary for my family and a new opportunity for them to explore life here in the USA. My son is now in Pre-K in a wonderful school (oh how the time flies by!) in the Annapolis Maryland area and we’ve also gotten lucky at being able to afford a wonderful house with a big backyard with lots of birds and trees. Some of my best work here in Maryland is sitting outside in the backyard with my laptop and enjoying the fresh air. The climate here in Maryland is a lot warmer than what I grew up with in Edmonton, Alberta but I am grateful for experiencing the weather of Ontario to prep me for what we are experiencing here in Maryland. From May till August temperatures were hot and humid like a swamp. However, now in October/November it is very mild with wonderful colours in the tree for Autumn. Last winter was quite mild in comparison to Canadian winters, which felt like a nice change. The one tidbit about Maryland winters that made me laugh is that elementary kids don’t have recess when the temperatures go below 0 degrees Celsius. That is basically all of Canada’s winters, especially where I grew up in Edmonton, so Arthur has gotten lucky! My year here in Maryland has been great and I am hoping to turn it into our long-term home so that I can find some stability for my son and our family while exploring my career.

 

I feel like I've come a long way in not only being a scientist, but as a person and I’ve learned a lot of lessons and knowledge that I will take with me into the future, all thanks to my time with PVL. Luckily, I am able to keep my postdoctoral position for a longer term if I can keep putting through proposals to convince scientific committees to fund my salary to do research. It can be a bit daunting to have to constantly ask for funding for work but at the same time it allows me to be an individual scientist and try proposing my own ideas. Through learning how to develop experiments, instruments, writing papers, or mentoring others I feel very prepared after my time with PVL to become a true scientist here at NASA Goddard.

 

Once again, I want to thank the PVL crew (past and present) for the amazing memories and our leader John Moores for creating the opportunities for us so that we can learn and thrive in our individual scientific way. Toronto has been a unique experience for me after having grown up on the prairies in a smaller city, but I am glad I was able to conquer Toronto and the horrendous traffic. I wish everyone the best at the PVL team and I’m sure I will see y’all at the next conference where I will accidentally hang out with you as I feel like I will always be a PVLer.

Exploring the Unknown: My First Steps into Planetary Science Research at the PVL

Every summer, we host undergraduates in the lab at the PVL and during the year we bring in volunteers to experience what professional research looks like. Today Ella, one of those undergrads, tells the story of their research journey so far!

by Ruella Ordinaria

Last summer, one of York’s monthly email updates featured an article on Dr. Haley Sapers’ expedition to Nunavut to test Mars rover simulations. The words, ‘astrobiology’ and ‘Mars’ immediately caught my attention. Seeing that Dr Sapers was part of the Planetary Volatiles Lab (PVL), I emailed Dr. Moores for potential opportunities to contribute to his lab. I exchanged an exciting conversation with Dr. John Moores and in the fall, I was assigned to help a PhD student, Grace Bischof, with her research on developing a Mars Microbial Survival (MMS) model. Fast forward, I completed eight months as an undergraduate volunteer at PVL and this summer, I received the NSERC USRA from NSERC and the Lassonde School of Engineering. 

Now, what’s the actual science I’m working on, you may ask? The MMS Model estimates the bioburden reduction on Mars spacecraft during the cruise phase and on the surface. The MMS model calculates the quantity of terrestrial microorganisms remaining on a spacecraft's surface as it is exposed to the effects of the most deleterious space conditions. These include high vacuum, extreme temperatures, solar UV radiation, and ionizing radiation such as solar wind particles (SWPs). This is important because when we send spacecraft to celestial bodies like Mars, we want to prevent forward contamination as it can impact future exploration of extra-terrestrial life on Mars.

My enriching, fulfilling experience while doing research at the PVL, along with the challenges that came with it, has allowed me to grow both academically and professionally. The first challenge I faced was my limited background in space and planetary science. When I joined the PVL, I was entering my second year as a Biochemistry major and I barely knew anything about biochemistry, let alone planetary science. Although I still struggle with this knowledge gap, it has become easier to address by learning through literature searches. In addition, I also struggled significantly with programming. Grace’s project, the MMS Model, uses Python for calculations and graphing. While I had previous experience with HTML / CSS and Python through hackathons and self-learning, I had never worked with numerical modeling or data processing before. Familiarizing myself with these concepts was a challenge, and I essentially had to learn from scratch—from graphing to using various Python libraries for modeling. Google and Stack Overflow became my go-to resources. Fortunately, I am surrounded by passionate Mars experts with many years of research experience who are always willing to answer my questions.

Not only did I learn about all the exciting things about microbial survival, Mars, clouds, and the atmosphere, but I’ve also developed many technical and soft skills such as coding, writing, data collection, collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking, just to name a few. This invaluable knowledge and skill are something that I would have never formally gained from my degree alone. Engaging in research early on in my academic career has also allowed me to apply the knowledge I’ve learned in the classroom to real, practical research. My interactions with lab members have given me insight into the workload, the highs and lows, and the overall culture in academia, which has helped clarify my career goals and deepened my passion for planetary science and research.

Most importantly, I learned that research is not instantaneous – it is a journey composed of both productive and unproductive days. I learned that some days you might read 10 papers, write pages of words, and run many lines of code, while on other days, you might spend hours just sitting, thinking, writing then scratching and writing again. Although there have been times when I felt unmotivated, I still look forward to coming to the office every day with the same excitement I had when I first visited Dr. Moores’ office.

And of course, one of the best parts about doing research is the people! My interest in research comes from my aspiration to be part of a community that shares a profound passion for exploring the intricacies of the world and a dedication to immersing themselves in their questions – I found that community in the PVL. Some of my favourite memories are getting last place during bowling, dilly-dallying at Toronto Island, and eating lunch at the Petrie courtyard under the legendary Newton tree (manifesting a Nature paper!). I owe all of my positive research experience to my role models – Grace, Dr. Moores, and all the PVL members. Their support has been incredibly helpful in navigating my research challenges and has kept me curious about the world.

So, what’s next? Tomorrow, the next day, and throughout the rest of the school year, I’ll be heading to the Petrie building to continue my exciting planetary science research! Stay tuned ;)!