[Insert Title Here]

Writing is a key part of being a researcher of any kind. It's not enough to do the work, take the data or make the discovery. It's not science until it is shared. This week, Alex reflects on their writing journey.

By Alex Innanen

I like to think of myself as a pretty good writer. Very young me harboured the wish to be a famous novelist when I grew up, and I probably still have old notebooks hidden somewhere in my parents’ house full of stories and attempted novels. There’s a lot about writing I like. I like putting words together in interesting and clever ways (I am a big fan of puns), I like figuring out how best to say something, and I really like the rules of language which feel a bit like a puzzle. In first year engineering we had a Technical Writing for Engineers course that many of my classmates groaned about but for me I was thrilled to have a whole class full of grammar quizzes. 

Moderate bragging aside, there’s one thing I struggle with time and again when I’m writing and that is choosing a title. Several of the posts I’ve written for this very blog have been sent to John with something like ‘I can’t think of a good title, HELP!’ at the top. I also write blog posts about once a month for the Curiosity Rover’s mission updates page, and there’s many a time I’ll have the whole post written, sitting in my inbox ready to be sent for approval and struggling to think of a title. 

It's not just blog titles either – short stories, journal articles, even my dissertation. And all these different kinds of writing need different sorts of titles! But this post is not just for me to complain about how hard titles are though. Having toiled in the title mines for as long as I have, I’ve developed some tricks and observations about choosing a good title. 

The job of your title is to give your audience somewhat of an idea of what they’re getting into, or at least to interest them enough that they might want to read what you’ve written. For something like a blog post, I try to keep it relatively short and clear. The title of this post, for instance, pokes fun at not being able to come up with a title while also giving an idea of what the post may be about. When I’m writing mission updates for Curiosity I tend to go one of two ways: some wordplay or reference to a well known phrase (for example, “New Year, New Clouds”), or succinctly describing something important from the plan (like “On Top of the Ridge” – three guesses where we were). 

Writing a title for a paper is a bit different. You can assume that whoever is reading your title has a bit more familiarity with the subject so you can be a bit more specific. Sometimes this leads to marathon-length titles. The title of my first research note, for example, “Minimum Mars Climate Sounder Retrieval Altitudes Reveal Cloud Altitudes at Aphelion and Stranded High-altitude Dust Following the MY34 Global Dust Storm on Mars” is twenty three entire words. This may seem a bit excessive, but you cannot deny that it tells you exactly what’s in the note. We’re also big fans of the humble colon in academia. My master’s thesis was titled “Aphelion Cloud Formation and Swiss Cheese Sublimation: Martian Atmospheric Water Vapour Processes”. The first bit of the title tells you the two subjects of my thesis, the second part ties them together. Sometimes, Journals will have guidelines for paper titles. Acta Astronautica, for example, has a 15 word limit. My research note above wouldn’t fly, and in fact the title I proposed for the paper I submitted there (which I posted about here) was too long and I had to figure out how to fit what I wanted to say in their word limit (I think I changed ‘Canadian Arctic’ to ‘Arctic’). 

So maybe I actually do know a bit more about this title thing than I thought when I started writing this blog post. In fact, I feel confident enough to offer some things to think about when you’re coming up with a title: 

1. Consider your audience. Will they recognise what Aphelion means? Will they enjoy a good pop culture reference? 
2. What is/are the main takeaway(s) of your piece? Are there different subjects you need to link?
3. Is there a word limit? Should there be a word limit? How can you be more concise?
4. How are you going to get people excited to read what you’ve written? 

As with most things, though, practice helps. The more I write, the more titles I need to think of and the less daunting it gets each time.  

Baby’s First Conference Talk

Public speaking: it's a critical part of communicating your science. But, apocryphally, most people would rather do almost anything else, even something unpleasant. I can tell you that even for me, the anxiety is real. It's there, any time I'm giving a talk or delivering a lecture. That can be a good thing, pushing you to refine your technique and your content. Some can even harness the nervous energy in their delivery! Fortunately, I've found most audiences to be understanding - our colleagues remember feeling that way too. Below, MSc student Abby discusses her first experience delivering a scientific presentation at a conference.

by Abigail Newton

To be perfectly clear before we begin: I am not a public speaker. I don’t consider myself to be good at presentations, I certainly haven’t had much practice with large crowds, and my brain stops working the moment I open my mouth. For all these reasons, I signed up for a 12-minute oral presentation at the International Meeting for Planetary Missions 6 (IPM) conference. The moment I saw the email pop-up in my inbox indicating that I received a presentation slot, I regretted all my previous decisions. But it was too late – I had no choice but to get prepared. Though I couldn’t have expected it, this presentation ended up being one of the best decisions I could have made.

The topic of my presentation was a cloud sensor, designed to turn on a camera when it detects Martian clouds are overhead. However, mere weeks before the conference, my sensor prototype was still unfinished, and I had another presentation at a different conference a month after IPM. It was a busy summer to say the least. Gathering my results just 5 days before my presentation – at a time when wildfire smoke concentrations were at the highest level they would be all summer – I found that my sensor could separate smoke from clouds. This was an unexpected, but welcome discovery. IPM itself is unique in that it’s attended by primarily engineers and was completely instrument-focused – completely up my alley.

Once I had gathered my results and wrapped my mind around the implications for my instrument concept, I decided to tackle the presentation itself. I practiced – wrote and rewrote, stumbled through a rocky presentation within the department, redid the presentation, got a class-A lecture from my airplane seat-mate on how I should “just relax”, practiced some more, anxiously sat through presentation after presentation on instruments with MILLIONS of dollars in funding, all before it was finally my turn. I wanted to vomit.

After 12 minutes of complete blackout, I found myself back in my seat. I came to and realized: it went well! I got a laugh out of the audience at the very beginning that allowed me to loosen up and relax through the rest of it. Did I make some small mistakes while speaking? Yes. Was I perfectly engaging every corner of the room? No.

Unfortunately, my worst fear came true.  I got stumped by a question that was perhaps less than relevant to my presentation in front of a room full of world-class scientists I was desperate to impress. I did not give an answer that could in any way be described as coherent, but the moderator stepped in and shut it down. 

Seasoned scientists and engineers continued to ask interesting questions about my presentation for the rest of the conference – the kindest people, treating me as a peer. My results showing the detection of amounts of wildfire smoke significant enough to override the thick cloud cover above caught attention and brought questions about making a similar version of the sensor for dust – something I had already been considering. Even better, my presentation was on the first day, so I was able to take a deep breath and enjoy the rest of the conference stress-free. 

Lots of hiking and learning was done in beautiful Boulder over the rest of the week. I was inspired by both presentations on the future of instrumentation and the gorgeous landscape. I would massively recommend giving conference presentations to any grad student terrified of public speaking – exposure therapy is the way to go.   

Say Yes to the Lab Group

It's an interesting exercise to look back from time to time. Can you make out the pathway that brought you to where you are today? No matter whether the decision at any particular juncture was good or ill in retrospect, as the song (and Mary Schmich column) goes: "your choices are half chance." But why not improve those odds? Today, MSc student Milena Markovich offers some advice for those thinking about returning to university for graduate school.

By Milena Markovich 

In December of 2023 I found myself with that annoying, undeniable and incurable itch. The itch to go back to school. Only six months after graduating from five arduous years of an engineering undergraduate program, complete with all-nighters, co-op terms and oceans of coffee, I had vowed that industry was the place for me. I wanted a break – a simple 9-to-5, no working on weekends (most weeks at least), no worrying about assignments or exams.  However, after only a couple months as a full-time engineer, I knew that this was not what I wanted my future career to look like. I had always paved my path through engineering with the goal of one day working in the space industry – and, after all, what was I waiting for? I decided “one day” had to become “today”. Now that I had made up my mind to pursue graduate school, I began the hunt every little scientist dreams of – the hunt for the perfect lab group.
 

Here we get to the crux of this blog post: an easy (in theory) how-to guide for finding the perfect grad school program for you. Step number one: “thank you, next” – meaning, establish your dealbreakers. For myself, the past 5 years of my life had been spent laboring over an engineering degree, and I was hesitant to throw that all away. I wanted my MSc program to be a low-stakes introduction to the world of research. From this principal objective, I could establish two requirements. First, the program or research must have some relation to engineering, whether it be with engineering courses or instrument-based research. Second, I needed to graduate from this program debt-free, such that I could later choose whether to remain in academia or return to industry, without the pressure of financial stressors. This led me to limit my search to graduate programs within Canada, both for the proximity to friends and family and to avoid hefty international tuition fees.

Step number two: “so tell me what you want, what you really, really want” – or, set your core values. Seriously answer the dreaded question from every behavioural interview: “where do you see yourself five years from now?”. No one stays in grad school forever (at least I hope not), and as such you need to tailor your graduate program to the career you want. No doubt priorities shift, interests evolve, and you can finish grad school with an entirely different goal. But based on your aspirations right now, you can start your hunt for a supervisor. For myself, I knew I wanted to retain the engineering mindset I had built from my undergraduate program. I also knew I valued the novel approach of my program – integrated engineering at UBC, which allowed me to learn multiple disciplines of engineering, informing a systems-based approach. These values were what initially made Dr. Moores’ career, and the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory, stand out to me. Having completed an undergraduate degree in engineering science at U of T, John has built his career bridging engineering and science interests in space exploration missions.

Step number three: “you’ve gotta have faith”. When it comes to grad school applications, a myriad of factors play into a supervisor’s ability to accept you as a student. When I first reached out to John, I initially received the dreaded “sorry, no vacancy”. However, as I continued connecting with various supervisors across Canada, a couple months later I opened my inbox to find a follow-up response. As luck would have it, a spot had opened up and I was able to meet with John to talk about potential thesis projects.

Step number four: “how deep is your love?” – I fear I must age myself and establish that this refers to the Bee Gees song, not Calvin Harris. Of equal importance as a supervisor or program, is your thesis project – namely, how much you can commit to this project. This is what will “take over” your life for the next, at minimum, two years. As such, you want to make sure that this project aligns with your goals beyond grad school. Imagine yourself sitting in an interview, discussing your work over the past couple years. Will this project help you impress your dream company and land the dream job? Will it help you take steps towards the path you want in academia? Is the project feasible to tackle with your skill set? Does it help you build a new skill set which you need to be a competitive candidate? When I first spoke to John, we discussed a modelling-based project which had me very hesitant to join the lab. I was steadfast in finding a project that would suit my engineering skills and which I could use to market myself to future employers in industry. Once again, in another blind stroke of luck, only a couple weeks after re-connecting with John he attended a conference which kickstarted renewed interest in a Lyman-alpha camera he has been working on for lunar ice prospecting from within permanently shadowed regions. Instrument-based? Check. Relevant to space industry interests? Also check. With this project aligning better with my goals, I was nearly sold on the Planetary Volatiles Lab.

Step number five: “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations”. If you are like me and have relocated for grad school, this step is likely of equal importance to everything else. Living in a new city, trying to make new friends while overwhelmed with the workload of research, taking courses and teaching assistantships can feel impossible. You want to establish what the lab culture is before you make this big jump. Ensure that the lab aligns with your personal expectations outside of research – a social, welcoming and warm atmosphere can help ease the transition to a new city. John happily connected me with Alex and Grace, both of whom helped confirm my decision for me. As numerous blog posts have detailed before, our lab makes time for social activities throughout the year and during conferences, facilitating a friendly environment. Establishing a support system within the lab has been the biggest factor in my success in moving to Toronto and starting graduate school. Research can be difficult in its own right, choosing a lab where you never feel alone helps to brighten both the tough times and the celebrations.

“Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go” – and that’s all folks. Following your own values, goals and passions will result in a foolproof strategy for picking the right lab group. These decisions are not one-size fits all, and at the end of the day only you can make this decision. So, think about these steps, write some pro’s-and-con’s lists and take the leap into the wacky world of graduate school. Whether this guide leads you to us at the Planetary Volatiles Lab or elsewhere, I wish you luck in your new adventure. 

Another Summer at PVL!

 Ahh, summertime! You'd be surprised by the number of people who think us academics just get four months of vacation. Instead, it's the busiest time of the year as we turn to focus almost exclusively on our research. But for those early career academics just stepping into research, it can be a formative experience. It's not just the work, but also the environment, the people and the excitement of having your own project in the midst of a talented and supportive group. I still remember my summer undergraduate research from back in the day. In this week's post, Ella shares her experience during her second summer with us. (Image Above: Kate, Brock and Ella canoeing at Sunnyside, the smallest ice-cream sizes at Kawartha, and the pizza party!)

 By Ella Ordinaria 

Hello PVL Blog! It’s me, Ella, the PVL undergrad! I wrote my first blog last summer, and here I am again – full circle!

This summer, I once again received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, which allowed me to work in the lab full-time. My work focused on revising the Cruise Phase Microbial Survival (CPMS) model that Moores and Schuerger developed in 2020. The original CPMS model calculated the bioburden reduction on the Europa Clipper (EC) spacecraft under a direct and Venus-Earth-Earth Gravity Assist (VEEGA) trajectory. However, when EC launched in October of last year, it followed a Mars-Earth Gravity Assist (MEGA) trajectory instead. So, we revised the CPMS model to reflect the MEGA trajectory.

I started working on this project in early 2025, but things didn’t really pick up until summer. After all the modeling work, our goal was to produce a 2,500-word research note – which brought me my greatest challenge: writing. I was overwhelmed by the messy notes I’d written throughout the year, and the constant revisions made the words jumble together. As many of you know, scientific writing often feels like a never-ending cycle of writing, erasing, and rewriting.

Ultimately, we published the paper in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (RNAAS). Seeing the work out there was so rewarding! I’m very grateful for the opportunity to write a first-author paper and for Dr. John Moores’s trust in entrusting this project to me. This would also not be possible without Dr. Moores, Dr. Schuerger, and PhD student Grace Bischoff, the co-authors of the paper. Their support and revisions have helped me grow immensely as a writer. I’m honored to receive guidance from the people I look up to! I also presented this work at the Lassonde Undergraduate Research Conference and did an interview on the AAS YouTube channel with Frank Timmins, the AAS Journals Deputy Editor-in-Chief. 

With the CPMS work crossed off my list, I spent the rest of the summer working on the Orbiting Sample (OS) container project. As with the CPMS model, we’re interested in bioburden reductions on the OS container, one of the key components of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. Since the MSR mission is one of the most ambitious planetary missions ever developed, the concept of “breaking the chain” of contact between Mars and Earth is a critical component. Coming from a biochemistry background, my main challenge on this project was the math and physics required to modify the original model to incorporate the energy balance during the cooling and heating phases of the OS container. I’m currently in the writing phase of this project which is a part of the process I do enjoy, though it’s also something I’d love to get better at. That said, most of my work at PVL has centered on modeling bioburden reductions on spacecraft, which happens to be one of my favorite concepts in astrobiology. Planetary protection excites me because it is an important consideration for forward and backward contamination, protecting Earth from foreign materials while ensuring the integrity of space exploration.

Work aside, this has probably been the most dynamic and eventful four months at PVL! With new students joining the lab, this summer was packed with fun socials and plenty of laughs. Some of our activities included rock climbing at Basecamp, trekking downtown to tackle the humongous ice cream portions at Kawartha Dairy, the annual summer pizza party, grabbing an iced matcha latte with Kate every morning (which we called the DOTD – drink of the day) and my personal favorite, the ultimate undergraduate adventure: canoeing at Sunnyside Beach. 

John and I at the Lassonde Summer Undergraduate Research Conference! 

Although summer has come to an end, thankfully my time at PVL has not. I’ll be taking the fall and winter semesters off for an internship, but I’ll still be involved with PVL to continue the OS project. Once a PVLer, always a PVLer!

Athletics + Academics = A Balanced Life

A challenge for many of us who do science professionally is knowing when to take a break. The engrossing feeling of diving into an all consuming problem can make it hard to remember to come up for air. But scientists are human beings too and we need other interests, connection and to take care of our physical bodies as much as anyone else. This week, our newest lab member Isabelle Marincic writes about how she strives to achieve that balance in her research career.

by Isabelle Marincic

Hello Lab Blog! My name is Izzy, and I’ve just joined the PVL as an MSc student in May 2025. I am so excited to be a part of this amazing group of scientists. I technically began working for Professor Moores in January as an RA, so I have been with the group for around 6 months. Within these first few months, I’ve begun working on projects related mainly to astrobiology (my favourite subject), including biological methane production on Mars and the feasibility of bacteria inhabiting Martian penitentes. I have also begun TA’ing which has been a new and exciting experience that I honestly have really enjoyed. On top of all of this, I am currently writing my first paper with the lab that will hopefully be submitted by the end of the summer! 
 
The reason for sharing all of this is not only to introduce myself, but to lead into the main topic of this blog post. I am an athletically motivated individual, and I strongly believe in a work-life balance. While I deeply enjoy academics and am grateful to be in the position I am, I always make sure to have an outlet that is separate from academia. After the long days of writing and reading papers, all I want to do is get on my feet and go do something that uses mainly my body rather than my brain. Ever since I was young, I’ve always been really athletic. I played soccer, volleyball, ran track and field and cross country, and just enjoyed being active in general. Now that I am a busy adult, finding time to be active is difficult, but it makes my quality of life so much better that I make sure to find time most days of the week to do something that moves my body. For a few years now I have been into weightlifting, which I aim to do three days a week. When I am not lifting in the gym, I am in the climbing gym 3x a week! I have been climbing for just over two years, and I am so thankful I found this sport. Climbing is fun and relaxing but also has such a strong community that I really enjoy being a part of. I have been able to meet so many people and make so many friends because of this sport, and it is extremely important to me to have spaces to meet people as it becomes increasingly difficult as an adult to do so as I get older. Human connection is something I seriously value in my life, and I can foster this through the athletic activities I participate in. 
 
For some reason, people in the climbing community constantly recruit their non-climbing friends to join climbing. I am one of those people. Since joining PVL I was repeatedly asking my lab-mates to come climbing with me. Some of them were eager to climb, while others I eventually wore down <3. This marked the first official PVL climbing outing. Those from the group able to make it out to Basecamp in downtown Toronto got to experience a fun evening of climbing, specifically bouldering! Bouldering is a style of climbing that does not involve ropes or harnesses where routes are set around 15 ft off the ground at their highest point. Mats cover the floor to break your fall, but proper falling technique is still a must-know before getting on the wall! Routes are organized by level of difficulty and use a V-grading system. Often, V0 is the easiest climb, with climbs getting progressively more difficult as the number increases. My lab mates absolutely rocked (pun intended) at our climbing session! While climbing obviously involves strength and endurance, it is 100% a mental sport as well. I have had to overcome mental blocks when attempting a problem which has only made me a stronger climber, and a more confident person. 
 
Getting to enjoy my favourite sport with my new lab mates was a really fulfilling experience as it allowed me to share something I love, and I had the opportunity to build stronger relationships with people I work alongside every day! Please enjoy the group picture from the evening above :)

Swapping Mars for Exoplanets: My Time at Harvard University

Providing graduate students with a range of experiences is a key part of helping them figure out what they want to do and where they want to do it once they have completed their degrees. Sometimes that means visiting another university lab, or working for a government agency or finding out what it means to join a team in the industrial sector. For much of the year, PhD student Grace Bischof has been investigating these questions in the lab of Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University.

by Grace Bischof 

Last summer, I received an email telling me that I was eligible to apply to the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement, funded through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This supplement designates money for graduate students to partake in research internships at institutions abroad to help build global connections. Immediately after receiving the email, I excitedly emailed John to ask if we could talk about possible researchers that I could reach out to about this opportunity to see if they would be interested in having me in their lab for a few months.

At the top of the list of researchers I was interested in connecting with was Dr. Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University. During my time interning at JPL, one of Robin’s papers formed part of the basis for the work I was doing there, so I became familiar with some of his research. About a year later, I saw Robin give two fantastic talks about the environment of Mars at LPSC and the 10th International Conference on Mars. Ironically, though the two talks I’d seen by Robin had been about Mars, and my research at York for the past ~5 years has been about Mars, Robin does not primarily do research on the Martian atmosphere. Though Mars makes up a portion of his research, he also works extensively on modelling the atmospheres of exoplanets. So, for the first time, I wrote and submitted a proposal for research outside of the solar system, characterizing the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets through Lyman-alpha transit spectroscopy.

I learned in late December that my proposal was successful and by the first week of February I was on a plane, flying to Boston, Massachusetts. Unlike the winter of 2023 that I spent in sunny Pasadena happily skipping the cold Toronto winter, Boston has a similar climate to home. Upon landing, I was greeted with below zero temperatures and several inches of snow on the ground. I took a cab to my new home in Cambridge (where Harvard is located), which is just across the Charles River from Boston, feeling equal parts excited and anxious about the next few months ahead of me.

Luckily, I soon learned that I had I little to be anxious about. Though I had never researched atmospheres other than Mars’, I loved the project I was working on (and will write a blog post detailing it later on!). At the beginning of the internship, it felt like I had a mountain of literature to read and understand to even grasp the basics of the project, but I chipped away at it slowly, finding a new love for exoplanetary science. Everyone in Robin’s group was extremely friendly and thoughtful – I learned a lot listening to them talk about their research. Going into this experience, I didn’t think I could enjoy an area of research as much as I love Mars, but I am very pleased to have discovered something new that I find so fascinating. 

One of the best things about working at Harvard is the stunning campus, with its gorgeous centuries-old buildings. A favourite location of mine on campus was the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which also encompasses the Geological and Mineralogical Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, as well as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. My office was on the upper floor of the Geological Museum, so I was greeted by walls of gorgeous rocks and minerals every day. With a student ID, I was able to get in for free and roam around the floors of these museums. I took lots of pictures of the dinosaur fossils and bones for my 3-year-old nephew, Tate, who is a dinosaur fanatic. My favourite part of the museum was the comparative zoology section, where there are taxidermized animals of every kind you can imagine from all over the world – I kept finding it so fascinating to think that people in Australia would think seeing a kangaroo is as mundane as we find seeing a squirrel in Toronto. 

Under the bones of a Steller’s sea cow, while admiring the giraffe on my right

Since it was my first time in Massachusetts, I spent some time exploring the Boston area with friends and family who came to visit. We walked the Freedom Trail, visiting historic Boston sites like the Paul Revere House, Granary Cemetery where some of the American Founding Fathers are buried, and boarded the U.S.S Constitution, which is the world’s oldest commissioned warship that is still afloat. When my dad visited, we rented a car and spent a morning wandering the streets of Salem, learning more of the Witch Trials that plagued the town in the 1600s. That afternoon, we drove to Concord and visited the Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set the novel Little Women. The 2019 film adaption of Little Women is one of my favourite movies of all time, so exploring the home that inspired the novel was an experience I won’t forget!

 

 Outside of the Orchard House where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women 

Before I knew it, it was June 1st, and I was packing my bags to fly back home to Toronto after four incredible months at Harvard. One thing to know about my academic journey while reading this blog is that getting to grad school was not necessarily the easiest for me. Though I loved the content of my undergraduate degree in physics and I worked hard at it, my grades were certainly not the best. When John accepted me into PVL in 2020, he was taking a real chance on me. All that to say: I never thought I would spend any time at an institution as prestigious as Harvard, let alone feel like I belonged there and was proud of the work I was doing. This internship helped me grow confidence in myself both personally and professionally. Five years ago, when I started grad school, I wouldn’t have believed I would gain that confidence, so I am beyond lucky and grateful for this experience – and especially for my experience in PVL which got me here in the first place.

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