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I come from Ireland originally--
much less rocky and cooler
than California. (laughs)
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So I was always interested in space.
And I think when you're
in different levels
of school when you're a
kid it's easy to think
that the only ways you can study space
is to do astronomy or to do physics.
But then later on when I was an undergrad
I discovered that you
can do geology and space.
And that was brilliant
because I enjoyed more
kind of the process of
doing a geological analysis
because it ties together a
lot of different skillsets.
And I enjoyed that.
So I think it's important
for people to know
that you can do pretty
much any type of science
and then apply it to space.
So I started on the Dawn mission in 2010,
about a year before we arrived at Vesta.
And at that point I'd just
graduated undergrad in Ireland.
I'd focused on terrestrial geology
and I knew I wanted to
specialize in planetary geology.
And I got the opportunity to come
over here to the US and do grad school.
So I started then just at
the beginning of grad school
and worked on Vesta for five years or so.
It was really great, I really enjoyed it.
It was a brilliant opportunity
to be integrated into the team like that.
I found that I got
integrated quite quickly
and got involved with a
lot of the geologic mapping
and some of the geologic analysis.
And I found the team to be very welcoming.
And it was a great opportunity
to work on an active
mission during grad school.
The prevalent feature that is on Vesta
and on Ceres are the craters.
And they were also kind of very surprising
because initially before
we got to Vesta and Ceres
we thought that Vesta would be more rocky
and have a lot of craters.
But it was thought that Ceres
would be much more ice-rich
and maybe have no craters at all.
It was thought they might relax out
because ice is quite a weak material.
So the fact that we see a
lot of craters on both bodies
was actually quite surprising.
And it indicates to us
that Vesta, as predicted,
is quite rocky, mostly rock.
But then that Ceres is
probably more of a mix
of ice and rock and maybe
some salty materials as well.
Yeah, so I think when I was a child
you tend to think that you can do anything
and you could do all these
crazy careers and stuff.
And I think it's important to remember
that you can do it in the end.
So because it's tempting to think that,
oh, I won't be the one that's chosen;
but they have to choose somebody,
So I think that's the big point.
They have to choose somebody
and you can put yourself
in the best position to be
that person that's chosen
to kind of get your dream career.
