1 00:00:02,510 --> 00:00:05,970 The Perseverance rover is on its way to Mars. 2 00:00:05,970 --> 00:00:11,800 In February, it will land in a fabulous area called Jezero crater. 3 00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:17,670 It's right there on that edge between the land and the ancient ocean. 4 00:00:17,670 --> 00:00:19,990 What do we expect to find? 5 00:00:19,990 --> 00:00:23,630 There could've been a habitable environment in that watershed area that picked up some 6 00:00:23,630 --> 00:00:28,140 potential biosignatures and deposited into the delta and got preserved. 7 00:00:28,140 --> 00:00:33,910 Hi, I’m Jim Green, Chief Scientist at NASA and this is Gravity Assist. 8 00:00:33,910 --> 00:00:38,199 On this Season of Gravity Assist we’re looking for life beyond Earth. 9 00:00:38,200 --> 00:00:45,640 I'm here with Dr. Kennda Lynch, and she is an astrobiologist and a geomicrobiologist 10 00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:49,019 studying life in extremes. 11 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:52,720 She works at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. 12 00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:54,880 Welcome, Kennda, to Gravity Assist. 13 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:55,900 Thank you. 14 00:00:55,900 --> 00:00:57,160 It's so great to be here. 15 00:00:57,170 --> 00:01:02,359 Well, you know, your current research really focuses on the studying of paleo-lake basins 16 00:01:02,359 --> 00:01:08,140 here on Earth, and so that makes you a perfect expert to be involved in the Perseverance 17 00:01:08,140 --> 00:01:15,110 rover since it's going to Jezero crater and land on an ancient lake basin, doesn't it? 18 00:01:15,110 --> 00:01:20,840 Umm, I, I would say it makes me one of several really good experts that are really excited 19 00:01:20,840 --> 00:01:22,400 at the fact that we're going to Jezero. 20 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:28,910 Well, let's first discuss what we know about the Earth's paleo-lake basins. 21 00:01:28,910 --> 00:01:30,610 Absolutely. 22 00:01:30,610 --> 00:01:35,350 What we know about Earth lake basins is a lot of our paleo-lake basins, these were ancient 23 00:01:35,350 --> 00:01:39,520 lakes that were, in a lot of cases, very, very big, very deep lakes. 24 00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:44,050 For example, Lake Bonneville, where my field site is, was an ancient lake of the Pleistocene 25 00:01:44,050 --> 00:01:47,230 era, and at one point, it was a thousand foot in depth. 26 00:01:47,230 --> 00:01:50,900 It was very big, very deep, actually freshwater lake. 27 00:01:50,900 --> 00:01:55,780 But, over time, because it was a closed basin lake and we had climate change, the lake started 28 00:01:55,780 --> 00:01:56,780 to dry out. 29 00:01:56,780 --> 00:01:59,890 It didn't have any outflow, so everything just evaporated, 30 00:01:59,890 --> 00:02:02,979 There's many of these across the world that we study. 31 00:02:02,979 --> 00:02:06,880 There's the Great Salt Lake here in Utah. We also have 32 00:02:06,880 --> 00:02:09,009 Death Valley also has paleo-lakes in it. 33 00:02:09,009 --> 00:02:12,000 The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia also has one. 34 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:15,380 We have paleo-lakes in China in the Qaidam Basin. 35 00:02:15,390 --> 00:02:20,959 So all these big lakes dried into these amazing playa environments where we have all of these 36 00:02:20,959 --> 00:02:26,510 lake sediments, we sometimes have occasional very, very shallow lakes that can develop 37 00:02:26,510 --> 00:02:32,159 in these environments, but we have amazing microbial diversity that can be found in these 38 00:02:32,159 --> 00:02:36,310 lake basin sediments after the lake went away, and that's what I like to study. 39 00:02:36,310 --> 00:02:40,450 Well, what exactly are you looking for when you get these sediments? 40 00:02:40,450 --> 00:02:43,099 We're looking at a couple of different things. 41 00:02:43,099 --> 00:02:47,879 Initially, we wanted to just try to understand what these ecosystems look like. 42 00:02:47,879 --> 00:02:51,560 There really hasn't been a lot of research, believe it or not, in these kind of systems 43 00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:55,879 because people didn't really understand that they could be very, very rich in life. 44 00:02:55,880 --> 00:02:58,800 So the first thing we do is we do a lot of 45 00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:02,500 a lot of heavy biology, so a lot of looking for DNA 46 00:03:02,540 --> 00:03:06,859 and trying to understand what we call the phylogeny. 47 00:03:06,859 --> 00:03:11,890 Who's there, how diverse they are, what does the ecosystem, what do the microbial communities 48 00:03:11,890 --> 00:03:13,650 look like? So that's, you know 49 00:03:13,650 --> 00:03:16,969 A lot of the first work that I did was understanding who's there and what they look like. 50 00:03:16,969 --> 00:03:21,379 Then the next thing we look for is how are they interacting with the environment, how 51 00:03:21,379 --> 00:03:25,159 are they interacting with the geochemistry, how are they living there, what are they eating, 52 00:03:25,159 --> 00:03:29,530 what are they breathing, how are they getting their energy, how are they interacting, all 53 00:03:29,530 --> 00:03:31,540 of these kinds of things. 54 00:03:31,540 --> 00:03:34,599 So we look for that, and we try to understand that. 55 00:03:34,599 --> 00:03:39,069 Kennda, can you tell me about a particularly memorable experience you had out in the field? 56 00:03:39,069 --> 00:03:42,129 Oh, wow, there's so many. I might, 57 00:03:42,129 --> 00:03:44,640 I'm going to give you two quick little ones. 58 00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:45,500 Umm, we 59 00:03:45,500 --> 00:03:48,140 When we were at the center of the basin we 60 00:03:48,140 --> 00:03:50,020 where there's an actual a 61 00:03:51,380 --> 00:03:53,540 an actual well that my colleagues 62 00:03:53,620 --> 00:03:58,000 had put in permanently, we found a little mouse hanging out in the well, just hanging 63 00:03:58,010 --> 00:04:02,739 out in the shade of the well, and he had somehow gotten onto the playa. 64 00:04:02,739 --> 00:04:05,299 But he was hanging out there during the heat of the day. 65 00:04:05,299 --> 00:04:10,760 Well, the next day, we came back to one of my boreholes that was about a mile away. 66 00:04:10,760 --> 00:04:14,670 That mouse was in my borehole using the borehole as shade. 67 00:04:14,670 --> 00:04:21,190 So he had, overnight, had gone that whole mile, mile and a half, and was using our borehole 68 00:04:21,190 --> 00:04:23,570 as a refuge for the day heat. 69 00:04:23,570 --> 00:04:26,480 It was very cute, and we got pictures of it. 70 00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:32,220 Then the second memorable experience was when we got our UTV stuck in some of the playa 71 00:04:32,220 --> 00:04:33,220 mud. 72 00:04:33,220 --> 00:04:34,320 That was a challenge. 73 00:04:35,320 --> 00:04:41,900 You know, the first mission to find perchlorates on Mars was Phoenix, but even Curiosity has 74 00:04:41,910 --> 00:04:45,390 confirmed that there are perchlorates but not everywhere. 75 00:04:45,390 --> 00:04:52,070 What are perchlorates, and tell us a little bit about how are they important? 76 00:04:52,070 --> 00:04:56,380 So perchlorates are what we call chlorine oxyanions. 77 00:04:56,380 --> 00:05:03,310 It's a chlorine atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms, and it's a really, really, really big 78 00:05:03,310 --> 00:05:07,280 oxidizer very similar to oxygen, so it gives the same 79 00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:11,100 kind of energy release that oxygen does. 80 00:05:11,100 --> 00:05:17,350 In fact, here on Earth, we use perchlorates as part of solid rocket fuel because when 81 00:05:17,350 --> 00:05:21,400 you light it up, it really gives a lot of energy that helps our rockets take off. 82 00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:25,060 People experience perchlorates every day in things like firecrackers. 83 00:05:25,070 --> 00:05:31,390 But we also know that perchlorate occurs naturally on Earth and, of course, on Mars. 84 00:05:31,390 --> 00:05:36,380 And on Mars, we see more perchlorate on Mars than we see anywhere on Earth, and so it's this 85 00:05:36,380 --> 00:05:42,980 incredible potential energy resource that life could use to generate energy and sustain 86 00:05:42,980 --> 00:05:44,000 an ecosystem. 87 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:50,040 The other reason, which is not as exciting, but perchlorates on Earth, they can be toxic 88 00:05:50,050 --> 00:05:54,440 to humans, so we want to understand perchlorates so that we can make sure that it doesn't affect 89 00:05:54,440 --> 00:05:58,300 our astronauts when we send them to Mars, so that we can mitigate the perchlorates and 90 00:05:58,300 --> 00:06:03,440 make sure that they don't make our astronauts sick when we send our first human mission 91 00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:04,400 to Mars. 92 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:07,500 Ok. We are at our first sampling point. 93 00:06:07,500 --> 00:06:12,880 This field site that you went to, the Pilot field site, where is it at, and why did you 94 00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:14,480 choose that? 95 00:06:14,480 --> 00:06:19,720 So Pilot Valley Basin is a part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, which basically encompasses 96 00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:22,280 pretty much most of northwestern Utah. 97 00:06:22,290 --> 00:06:26,560 So basically, once you get past Salt Lake City, the rest of it is the Great Salt Lake Desert, 98 00:06:26,570 --> 00:06:32,420 and Pilot Valley is a sub-basin of that desert that actually because of how it's nestled 99 00:06:32,420 --> 00:06:37,370 in between two mountain ranges is kinda off on its own, it's all Jeep roads to get there, it's 100 00:06:37,370 --> 00:06:38,460 not that easy to get to. 101 00:06:38,460 --> 00:06:45,180 So there hasn't been a lot of anthropogenic input onto Pilot Valley, whereas other basins 102 00:06:45,180 --> 00:06:50,250 in the Great Salt Lake Desert, they do a lot of salt-mining, a lot of economic geology. 103 00:06:50,250 --> 00:06:54,750 Pilot Valley has been off on its own and pretty much left pristine. 104 00:06:54,750 --> 00:06:59,110 And how I found this environment actually very much relates to the Phoenix mission and our 105 00:06:59,110 --> 00:07:00,250 discovery of perchlorate. 106 00:07:00,250 --> 00:07:07,030 I was working with Dr. Sam Kounaves, who was a Co-I on Phoenix at the time and is one of my 107 00:07:07,030 --> 00:07:13,880 my long-term mentors and definitely a wonderful, wonderful scientist. 108 00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:20,660 And I was working with him on his sensors, his wet chemistry sensors, and during the Phoenix 109 00:07:20,670 --> 00:07:24,680 mission, I was in grad school and he called me. 110 00:07:24,690 --> 00:07:28,820 He called me and I think he actually might've called me from JPL and said, "Kennda, do you 111 00:07:28,820 --> 00:07:34,040 know anything about perchlorate," and started me down this road about looking at perchlorate 112 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:40,060 and microbes that can use perchlorate. 113 00:07:40,060 --> 00:07:48,460 The following summer, I was driving to Ames Research Center to start my Harriet Jenkins 114 00:07:48,460 --> 00:07:51,200 Predoctoral Fellowship summer portion. 115 00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:54,800 I was driving through Utah and looking at the Great Salt Lake Desert, and I had done 116 00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:58,460 all this research about perchlorate and where it lives in the Atacama, and I'm looking at 117 00:07:58,460 --> 00:08:02,070 the Great Salt Lake Desert and I'm like, "I wonder if there's perchlorate here. 118 00:08:02,070 --> 00:08:03,780 That would be kind of a neat environment to study." 119 00:08:03,780 --> 00:08:08,570 So I wrote a little mini-proposal to get the summer internship money the next summer from 120 00:08:08,570 --> 00:08:13,810 my school, and I went out and did a field expedition, and literally it changed my whole 121 00:08:13,810 --> 00:08:15,440 direction of my dissertation. 122 00:08:15,440 --> 00:08:17,060 And you, it just kind of keeps 123 00:08:17,060 --> 00:08:21,740 keeps getting more and more interesting and more and more fun every time we go out there. 124 00:08:21,740 --> 00:08:25,700 Well you know, there are other places in the solar system, you know, that we were 125 00:08:25,700 --> 00:08:28,840 thinking of looking for life, like Europa. 126 00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:32,780 Are you doing any research on Earth that relates to Europa? 127 00:08:32,780 --> 00:08:35,420 Definitely some of the work that we're doing in my basin. 128 00:08:35,420 --> 00:08:40,560 We're looking at perchlorates reducing bacteria in the hypersaline systems of my basin 129 00:08:40,760 --> 00:08:46,440 One of my recent research papers that just came out last summer, where we basically documented 130 00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:54,550 our first discovery of perchlorate reducing microbes cohabitating in an area there was 131 00:08:54,550 --> 00:08:58,440 actually also naturally-occurring perchlorate, something that's never been documented before. 132 00:08:58,440 --> 00:09:04,610 So, now, we have a relevant Earth analog ecosystem to learn about how perchlorate reducing microbes 133 00:09:04,610 --> 00:09:09,690 can live in what on Earth is an extreme environment but would be more of a normal environment 134 00:09:09,690 --> 00:09:15,490 on Mars or Europa, living in a brine or a salty environment in Mars and Europa. 135 00:09:15,490 --> 00:09:20,080 I remember that once you did a talk called "All Life Poops." 136 00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:24,941 Does that mean that even bacteria has waste, and could we find traces of that in any of 137 00:09:24,941 --> 00:09:27,520 the samples that we bring back, whether it's from Mars 138 00:09:27,520 --> 00:09:30,160 or flying through the plume over Europa? 139 00:09:30,170 --> 00:09:31,230 Yep, indeed. 140 00:09:31,230 --> 00:09:37,050 All life takes in energy and creates waste products or, for lack of a better word, poops, 141 00:09:37,050 --> 00:09:41,820 and it is indeed often these waste products that turn into biosignatures 142 00:09:41,820 --> 00:09:43,680 or possible biosignatures of life. 143 00:09:43,680 --> 00:09:45,800 For example, we're breathing poop right now. 144 00:09:45,800 --> 00:09:47,440 We are breathing tree poop. 145 00:09:47,440 --> 00:09:49,960 So oxygen is tree poop. 146 00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:54,560 So oxygen, molecular oxygen, is a potential biosignature 147 00:09:54,560 --> 00:09:56,740 that we look for in extrasolar planets. 148 00:09:56,740 --> 00:10:01,160 So, absolutely, poop can be a biosignature. 149 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:02,160 Wow. 150 00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:04,410 You're absolutely right. 151 00:10:04,410 --> 00:10:06,400 I just never thought of it that way. 152 00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:08,600 I know. 153 00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:09,600 It's so funny. 154 00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:12,690 When I show kids, some of them go ... and try to hold their breath. 155 00:10:12,690 --> 00:10:17,020 They're like, "I don't want to breathe poop," and I'm like, "Don't have a choice." 156 00:10:17,020 --> 00:10:18,260 You need that, okay? 157 00:10:18,260 --> 00:10:19,040 You need that poop. 158 00:10:19,040 --> 00:10:24,860 That's what makes different types of life coexist together, and in fact, we need that 159 00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:26,980 oxygen production from our plants. 160 00:10:26,990 --> 00:10:27,990 Yep, absolutely. 161 00:10:27,990 --> 00:10:31,310 Just as they need the CO2 production that we create. 162 00:10:31,310 --> 00:10:31,800 Yep. 163 00:10:31,800 --> 00:10:36,380 So that's what creates a biosphere is that important relationship between the different 164 00:10:36,380 --> 00:10:38,170 species of life. 165 00:10:38,170 --> 00:10:39,170 Exactly. 166 00:10:39,170 --> 00:10:44,010 So, Kennda, what about Perseverance is getting you really excited? 167 00:10:44,010 --> 00:10:47,950 When that lands in Jezero crater, what do you want it to do? 168 00:10:47,950 --> 00:10:53,100 I am so excited about what we call the bottomset deposits. 169 00:10:53,100 --> 00:10:57,320 These are these really, really fine deposits, really fine grains. 170 00:10:57,320 --> 00:11:02,520 They're usually mostly made up of clays and carbonates on Earth. 171 00:11:02,520 --> 00:11:07,320 They're really small particles that deposit in the lake basin and at the front of the 172 00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:13,510 delta that can make these great sediments where we can preserve organics and biosignatures. 173 00:11:13,510 --> 00:11:19,950 I am so excited for Perseverance to go and start taking a look at those particular deposits 174 00:11:19,950 --> 00:11:20,950 in the crater. 175 00:11:20,950 --> 00:11:25,690 We're going to have some of the best chances of finding preserved organics in those deposits 176 00:11:25,690 --> 00:11:31,390 because that's an environment on Earth where those kind of lake bed deposits or delta deposits, 177 00:11:31,390 --> 00:11:36,210 we know we get a lot of concentrated carbon that gets preserved and stabilized very well 178 00:11:36,210 --> 00:11:37,440 in those kind of deposits. 179 00:11:37,440 --> 00:11:39,950 So I'm really excited about the bottomsets. 180 00:11:39,950 --> 00:11:47,420 It's right there on that edge between the land and the ancient ocean, and this river 181 00:11:47,420 --> 00:11:54,750 was dumping into that when this impact occurred and created this huge crater we now call Jezero. 182 00:11:54,750 --> 00:12:00,000 Would you think we might be able to find some biomolecules if you've got complex carbon, 183 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:01,830 a material that we're also finding? 184 00:12:01,830 --> 00:12:03,370 Is there a hope that we could do that? 185 00:12:03,370 --> 00:12:10,270 You know, I really do think so because what's really amazing about these bottomset deposits 186 00:12:10,270 --> 00:12:14,660 is that because of the lake environment and the fact that we have this delta, it could 187 00:12:14,660 --> 00:12:20,580 come from three potentially different habitable environments within the Jezero crater area. 188 00:12:20,580 --> 00:12:24,880 It could've come from up in the watershed, and the watershed is that area where all the 189 00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:29,440 water kinda flowed together into one big river or stream 190 00:12:29,440 --> 00:12:33,560 and deposited the water and the sediments that created the delta. 191 00:12:33,560 --> 00:12:37,020 There could've been a habitable environment in that watershed area that picked up some 192 00:12:37,020 --> 00:12:43,010 potential biosignatures and deposited into the delta and got preserved. 193 00:12:43,010 --> 00:12:45,480 It could've come from the lake itself. 194 00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:50,089 Or it could've been preserved from a transitional habitable zone like I study, this subsurface 195 00:12:50,089 --> 00:12:54,399 environment where there's groundwater moving through these sediments after the lake's gone, 196 00:12:54,399 --> 00:12:58,830 and there could've been a subsurface ecosystem that could've lived there for a time before 197 00:12:58,830 --> 00:13:03,160 water retreated even deeper into Mars, and there could've been life that could've left 198 00:13:03,160 --> 00:13:05,000 some potential biosignatures there. 199 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:10,610 So we have three different potential habitable environments that could've left biosignatures 200 00:13:10,610 --> 00:13:13,820 in these deposits, so I just 201 00:13:13,820 --> 00:13:17,300 I'm so excited to see what we can find out when we get samples from there. 202 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:23,779 You bring up something I hadn't really thought about, but, indeed, with that lake over time 203 00:13:23,780 --> 00:13:28,700 being eroded away and then the atmosphere becomes very thin, 204 00:13:28,700 --> 00:13:31,740 that's going to draw groundwater out. 205 00:13:31,740 --> 00:13:37,580 Yeah, especially since we know now that groundwater was a significant part of the hydrology on 206 00:13:37,589 --> 00:13:42,400 Mars, that that's going to be a really important environment for us to start to try to understand. So 207 00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:46,820 Again, I'm so excited to see what we're going to be able to find out. 208 00:13:46,820 --> 00:13:52,100 Well, you've also been involved in education and diversity efforts in what we call science, 209 00:13:52,100 --> 00:13:55,980 technology, engineering, and mathematics or STEM 210 00:13:55,980 --> 00:13:57,780 you know, as an acronym. 211 00:13:57,780 --> 00:14:01,240 Can you tell us a little bit about what your efforts are and what you've been doing in 212 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:02,240 this area? 213 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:04,900 I am a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts. I started 214 00:14:04,900 --> 00:14:08,120 I was my mom's first Girl Scout, and my mom was a professional 215 00:14:08,120 --> 00:14:10,120 worked on the professional staff, so I grew 216 00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:14,560 up in girl scouting and giving back and reaching out and educating. And so 217 00:14:14,560 --> 00:14:18,850 Yeah, I've just been doing it my whole life, all through college and undergrad. 218 00:14:18,850 --> 00:14:22,700 I have mentored so many students while working as a full-time engineer. 219 00:14:22,700 --> 00:14:25,620 I've done a lot of school presentations. 220 00:14:25,620 --> 00:14:27,320 And, right now 221 00:14:27,320 --> 00:14:31,940 and in Grad School, you know I've mentored students and taught classes 222 00:14:31,940 --> 00:14:37,920 Right now, I've got three students I'm mentoring, two directly at the LPI, one indirectly with 223 00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:42,100 a colleague who's asked me to mentor one of their students of color, and I'm very excited 224 00:14:42,100 --> 00:14:44,370 to be able to do that. 225 00:14:44,370 --> 00:14:50,180 I also do a lot of STEM outreach with our education and public engagement department 226 00:14:50,180 --> 00:14:52,670 here at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. 227 00:14:52,670 --> 00:15:00,470 I'm a Ford Fellow, so I interact with that community quite a lot and try to help with 228 00:15:00,470 --> 00:15:06,580 efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion across the space sciences and just 229 00:15:06,580 --> 00:15:07,620 STEM in general 230 00:15:07,620 --> 00:15:11,200 Well, I personally want to thank you for all that activity. 231 00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:17,870 I enjoy talking to the public and talking about the fabulous science that we do. 232 00:15:17,870 --> 00:15:21,920 You just can't stop me, and I'm just delighted that you're doing the same. 233 00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:28,390 Well, Kennda, I always like to ask my guests to tell me what was that person, place, or 234 00:15:28,390 --> 00:15:34,620 thing that happened that got them so excited, that enabled them to become the scientist 235 00:15:34,620 --> 00:15:38,440 they are today, and I call that a gravity assist. 236 00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:41,530 So, Kennda, what was your gravity assist? 237 00:15:41,530 --> 00:15:45,910 Well, there was so many people along the way, I can't recount them all, but what I will 238 00:15:45,910 --> 00:15:51,440 tell you is that my biggest gravity assist, the one that just makes me well up right now 239 00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:58,440 is that my first summer internship at Kennedy Space Center, I was a space life science training 240 00:15:58,440 --> 00:15:59,839 program participant. 241 00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:03,850 I won't give you a year, but it was way back when, when the shuttle was flying. 242 00:16:03,850 --> 00:16:08,840 And it was my first, you know, entry into the space world 243 00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:10,540 that I'd always wanted to be a part of, and 244 00:16:10,540 --> 00:16:12,399 I got accepted into that program. 245 00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:16,100 And the biggest gravity assist for me was seeing my first shuttle launch. 246 00:16:17,040 --> 00:16:18,880 They let us go out and watch the shuttle launch 247 00:16:18,900 --> 00:16:23,540 at Kennedy, and I got to see one of the shuttle launches, and that first shuttle launch and 248 00:16:23,540 --> 00:16:27,430 watching that spacecraft go into the air and hearing the noise and watching the alligators 249 00:16:27,430 --> 00:16:32,490 jump out of the water because it was so noisy for them was just so inspiring and just ... I 250 00:16:32,490 --> 00:16:36,920 couldn't believe that at 20 years old I was there and I could be here and that I was a 251 00:16:36,920 --> 00:16:38,990 part of the space industry finally. 252 00:16:38,990 --> 00:16:42,940 So that was definitely one of my biggest gravity assists that kept me going. 253 00:16:43,480 --> 00:16:44,880 Well, that was wonderful. 254 00:16:44,880 --> 00:16:47,520 Well, thanks so much for joining me today. 255 00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:49,880 I've really enjoyed our discussion. 256 00:16:50,320 --> 00:16:51,320 Me, too. 257 00:16:51,320 --> 00:16:53,200 Thank you so much for having me. 258 00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:58,529 Well, join me next time as we continue our journey to look for life beyond Earth.