Page 16 - Abacoa Community News - February '22

Page 16, Abacoa

FAU FeAtUres

Wilkes Honors College Alumna laboratory on FAU’s John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter.
“Our plan is to ensure that when the samples return to
Selected For Exclusive “Global Earth, potentially hazardous material from the Mars rover is
Leadership Program” either fully contained or sterilized,” said Fields. “In addition,
it’s imperative for the samples obtained by the rover to be
Florida Atlantic University contained within an ultra-clean environment when it returns
Harriet L. Wilkes Honors to Earth. That way, scientists will know that any potential
College (WHC) alumna, discovery of ancient life did in fact originate on the red planet.”
Angie Joseph, is among 60 The car-sized rover landed in the Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile-
highly accomplished artists wide basin located on the planet’s northern hemisphere.
selected to take part in the Experts believe that around 3.5 billion years ago, a river
Global Leadership Program flowed into a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe,
– an Ivy-League curated which straddles the border of California and Nevada.
educational opportunity for 2031, as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign being According to NASA, this is one of the best places to search
impact-focused community planned by NASA and the European Space Agency. Before for signs of microbial life, as the ancient river could have
changemakers. Joseph, the rover went to space, NASA and its engineers worked collected and preserved organic molecules.
who concentrated on hard to prevent Earth’s microbes from contaminating Mars. While the rover explores, it will be collecting samples
transdisciplinary visual arts Now, before the samples collected by the rover return to of rocky material – up to 30 of which may be returned. The
and mathematics, credits the unique and fully immersive Earth, Florida Atlantic University is helping NASA design M2020 rover is equipped with seven instruments, 25 cameras
interdisciplinary learning environment WHC provides students protocols for sterilizing Mars material and protecting our — the most ever in deep-space exploration — and even a
for her drive in arts entrepreneurship. biosphere. helicopter the size of a tissue box to take aerial images. The
“When I came to FAU, I had intended on pursuing an Gregg Fields, Ph.D., executive director of FAU’s Institute rover uses a rotary-percussive drill and hollow coring bit to
education that would guide me in an art-centered, nonprofit for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH) and drill into rocks and collect samples just a little thicker than
organizational management role,” said Joseph. “It was the a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry a pencil. This sampling system is located on the end of the
support, guidance and passion for student success from WHC in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, is working in rover’s 7-foot-long robotic arm. These state-of-the-art tools are
faculty that helped build my confidence to pursue art and, collaboration with a team of scientists to ensure a “microbe- collecting information about Martian geology, environmental
essentially, be empowered to take part in the Global Leaders free” return of Mars samples in a vessel with multiple layers conditions, atmosphere and possible biosignatures that can be
Program,” said Joseph. of protection. The sample container would be launched into used as evidence for past or present life.
Joseph is an alumna of the FAU Kelly/Strul Emerging Scholar Mars orbit, collected by a spacecraft that would package it “Most proteins we think about are obviously very helpful
Program, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and inside a sealed container, sterilize the seal, and then package in our bodies. However, there are very specific proteins
Sciences in Spring 2022. She plans to continue pursuing a career that container inside another sealed vessel. that have been noted to behave in a pathological fashion
in art in a nonprofit but will remain dedicated to expressing her Fields, a leading expert in chemistry and biochemistry, that contribute to disease, for example, Alzheimer’s and
creativity through her illustrations. was invited to work on the heat sterilization step with Parkinson’s diseases,” said Fields.
researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory based The overarching plan would be to inactivate or encapsulate
FAU Scientist Aims To Ensure out of California, Nelson Laboratories headquartered in Utah, any potentially hazardous bioactive particles by heating and
and Johnson & Johnson based in New Jersey. The research
sealing the sample tubes inside a multilayered vessel that will
“Microbe-Free” Mars Samples group has been addressing not only heat-resistant bacteria, return to Earth. However, the ideal temperature and duration
but individual proteins that, on Earth, can act as infectious to get the job done is still being determined. To figure this
By Gisele Galoustian agents (e.g. bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow out, the partner laboratories send Fields heat-treated samples
The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is collecting samples disease). These biomolecules were chosen for testing as of a common protein called bovine serum albumin as well
in search of signs of ancient microbial life, which would representatives of the simplest, hardiest infectious agents as model prion protein.
advance NASA’s quest to explore the past habitability of known. Fields is providing complimentary technologies for
Mars. The samples are set to return to Earth no earlier than assessing degradation of the protein-based targets from his FAU Features on page 18