Western grad part of NASA rover's hunt for ancient life on Mars
The NASA rover mission scouring Mars for ancient life has a connection to Western University.
Sudbury native Raymond Francis, who graduated from Western in 2014 with a PHD in computer engineering and planetary science, is an engineer at NASA'S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Francis, whose aspirations include becoming a Canadian Space Agency astronaut — maybe even one of the first on the red planet — is part of the team helping to guide the rover Perseverance through Mars's Jezero crater, which scientists say was a lake 3.5 billion years ago.
It is the first time a Mars rover will be collecting rock and soil, which will be stored until the material can be returned to Earth.
“If ever there was life on Mars, this is the time it may well have arisen,” Francis said. “We would be elated if we found signs of ancient life on Mars. No one is expecting current life, but we explicitly have goal of finding signs of life.”
Jezero, which means lake in Serbian, is named after a Croatian settlement.
“The lake was there for a long time because the river flowing into it had enough time to build up a delta, the kind you find at the mouth of the Mississippi or the Nile,” Francis said.
“Deltas are also a good place to preserve signs of life, because they are constantly setting down new sediment. If there are living things in that lake, they can get buried in the sediment and preserved.”
But even if they don't find life, the research into Mars's environment, history and evolution would be incredibly valuable, he said.
“Any lake like this on Earth 3.5 billion years ago was probably full of microbes,” Francis said. “If this one on Mars was not, it tells us something about the difference between these two planets, regardless of life.”
Perseverance's landing last Thursday — NASA shared video online — “worked out almost perfectly,” he said.
“People have put a lot of their life into this for the last decade and a lot of things had to go right for that landing to succeed,” Francis said. “(At) each critical juncture, you could see people getting more hopeful.”
Now that Perseverance has landed, Francis' work begins.
As science engineering liaison, he helps co-ordinate discussions of what the science team wants to do.
“They might be what observations to make, which experiments to run, where to drive the rover to make our next studies,” he said.
The rover is “greatly improved” from its predecessor, Curiosity.
“It looks a lot like Curiosity rover, but it is not,” Francis said. “We have greatly improved capabilities and our autonomous driving system is much improved. We'll be able to drive farther and faster.”
Francis will also help with operation of its artificial intelligence system.
“I am going to have a role in deploying that software and making sure it gives us good science data,” he said.
Francis also runs a “supercam,” or laser geochemical spectrometer.