The scientist

Nº006 / 100

Abigail Allwood

Geologist, astrobiologist and principal investigator on NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission

In 2012, Brisbane-born Abigail Allwood gathered with other NASA scientists, dignitaries and guests to watch the Mars rover, Curiosity, land on the Red Planet. When the moment came, the audience let out a thunderous roar. Even Allwood’s unborn baby – she was six months pregnant – got in on the action. “My daughter began jiggling around with excitement. It was such an incredible thing, waiting for that signal.”

It’s a feeling Allwood, 47, is likely to have again when her latest project, Mars 2020, takes off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in July. The mission? To determine if Mars has ever contained microbial life. “The job of the science team is to select samples and we’ll have six instruments at our disposal – one of them PIXL, which I’m in charge of – to help make decisions,” says Allwood, who’s based at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If the mission is successful, it won’t be the first time Allwood has made history. Between 2003 and 2005 she discovered the oldest signs of life on our own planet: microbial fossils dating back nearly 3.5 billion years inside geological formations called stromatolites in Western Australia’s Pilbara. But Mars is the big one. As to whether we’re the only living beings in the universe, Allwood says there’s “no evidence in one direction or the other… but if we found evidence on two planets in the same solar system? That’d be pretty compelling.”