What it means for me personally... it's
quite interesting, it's actually exactly
thirty years since I've been involved in
NASA projects. I started off at the age
of I just turned 20. I think I actually
applied when I was 19, and I started
working on what was called the Space
Station Freedom Project and during that
time I was really interested in space
exploration and there were some
proposals out there that dealt with, you
know, going to Mars and how the space
station and the moon would be a stepping
stone and here we are 30 years later and
we're doing robotic missions to the
surface of Mars and that ties in
specifically to the type of research
that I'm doing right now. In general, I
study double-stranded DNA viruses across
domains of life but within that we have
one track where we're looking at virus-host interactions and extremophile microorganisms,
and so, this mission to Mars,
Perseverance, where they're actually
looking specifically for biosignatures
is quite exciting and I hope that we
find something that indicates there's
either, there's been life on that planet.
Well, what I'm really excited about with
this particular mission is the fact that
we're actually going to bring, you know,
samples back from the surface.
Even though it's not my field of expertise,
there's a whole subfield in microbiology
that crosses over with paleontology,
looking for micro fossils. And so, looking
for indications that some kind of
microbial life has existed so if we find
something in, you know, chert-like or any
other kind of sediment that indicates
that there may have been cellular type
of life or some kind of organized
biomolecules, then that's certainly going
to be exciting for my research
because we're very interested in extreme
microbiology and how viruses,
in particular, helped evolution to proceed
in the microbial domain.
