Geologists Abigail Allwood was announced this weekend as one of the seven principal investors in NASA's next mission to Mars, becoming the first woman and Australian to lead a team that will search for life on the Red Planet.
"When the call came I was ecstatic," said Allwood, who went to school in Brisbane and now lives in Los Angeles with her family, according to The Age. "My team and I were pretty proud."
Allwood, 41, is the first female principal investigator on a Mars mission ever.
"I'm pretty chuffed about that. I'd like to pave the way for other women to do the same thing," she said. "It's no longer an old boys club."
On Aug. 1, NASA announced the seven scientific projects for its next Mars rover. The instruments will look for evidence of life, storing samples to be potentially returned to Earth in future missions.
The mission will also help pave the way for future manned missions to Mars.
Allwood will be in charge of an instrument called the Planetary Instrument X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL, that will use X-rays to study the chemistry of rock samples.
Any traces of life on Mars would probably be microbial, according to Allwood.
"Most people think that when we're looking for bio-signatures of life we're looking for organics or microfossils, but there are a lot of other types of traces that microbial life can leave in the rocks and our instrument will be able to detect some of those," said Allwood.
Allwood said the past six months since her team submitted their proposal for PIXL to be included for the mission has been a "bit of a rollercoaster."
"I was starting to get the feeling that we might have been successful in the last few weeks as there were a few rumors on the grapevine, but you can never believe those," she added.
Based on the design of the Mars rover Curiosity, which is currently being used by NASA on the planet, the new rover will be launched with more sophisticated and upgraded hardware.
The rover is worth approximately $130 million, and will determine if Mars will ever be habitable for humans, while also looking for signs of ancient Martian life, according to the space agency, according to NASA.
The mission is responsive to the science objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.
The Mars 2020 rover is part the agency's Mars Exploration Program, which includes the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.
Allwood said leading her team will be both "exciting and daunting."
"I've got to deliver this instrument to NASA and that is no easy task. I've got some of the world's best engineers in my team but the buck stops at my desk," she said. "It's not going to be all beer and skittles, that's for sure."
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