chris mckay antarctica

It worked well, but our goal now is to make it fully autonomous. All Hotel Mars shows are archived as Space Show programs. Beneath the ice, we’ve found lake ecosystems that live in the twilight zone. My colleagues and I began putting robots with samplers into the Dry Valley lakes. Get Quanta Magazine delivered to your inbox. I spent a lot of time on icebreakers in February 1987 looking for life in the ocean below the Ross Ice Shelf, which is almost 200,000 square miles, about the size of France, and more than 2,000 feet thick. In 2017 and 2019, we went to the Greenland ice sheet to test a drill you could take to Europa. Priscu, a regents professor of polar ecology at Montana State University, got his first taste of winter more than 40 years ago after entering a doctoral program at the University of California, Davis in microbial ecology. [14][15], Media related to [[commons:Category:{{#property:P373}}|Christopher McKay]] at Wikimedia Commons. Priscu led one of two research teams that in 1999 announced the presence of biological organisms in an ice formation atop subglacial Lake Vostok, the world’s third-largest freshwater body, which lies more than two miles below the East Antarctic ice sheet. The ice thickness on Europa is at least 6 miles, more than twice that of Vostok. C.P. Chris McKay Planetary Scientist - NASA Quest, Photochemically Driven Collapse of Titan's Atmosphere, Organic Synthesis in Experimental Impact Shocks, "Radiative-Convective Model of Warming Mars using Artificial Super-Greenhouse Gases", "Planetary Ecosynthesis on Mars: Restoration Ecology and Environmental Ethics", Video of Chris McKay on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, "Are We Bound for Space? But we could get a lander down. McKay, "Let's Put Martian Life First," The Planetary Report, XXI(4), 4-5 (2001). Other weekday times can be morning , afternoon, or evening as you will see from the program schedule below. I’d read some of the books by early explorers like Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. But this is why I’ve done these winters: We’re figuring out how these ecosystems function with so little energy input and wanted to get a year-round look. Priscu has also been to the Himalayas several times, including Mount Everest, to analyze the bacterial content of ice cores collected at various elevations. McKay has done research on planetary atmospheres, particularly the atmospheres of Titan[4] and Mars, and on the origin and evolution of life. In the last paragraph of our 1999 Science paper on Lake Vostok, we wrote: “Microbes within a liquid water habitat deep below a frozen surface provide an analog for possible life on Europa.” And in a 2012 paper with Kevin Hand of JPL, we expanded on the idea of Vostok as a model for the Europan ocean and proposed that life-detection equipment be included inside an ice drill. ", McKay's Public Lecture on Saturn's Moon Titan, https://encyclopediaofastrobiology.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_McKay&oldid=8062, Commons category with page title different than on Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). I looked through one and sat there in awe as the continent unveiled itself before me. We welcomed back Dr. Chris McKay of NASA Ames discuss Mars, lunar bases, the possibility of organics and even life on Mars, and humans to Mars missions. It’s kind of like the Mississippi Delta with 3,000 feet of ice on it. We drilled into Lake Mercer last year, going through about 3,500 feet of ice, and we found life there, too. Last year, his group sampled nearby Lake Mercer at a similar depth under the ice, achieving similar results. In 1984, Priscu headed back to the U.S. to join the faculty at Montana State because of its proximity to snow and ice, but his stay was soon interrupted when funding came through for a proposed study of photosynthesis beneath the permanently ice-covered lakes of Antarctica. Dr. Chris McKay, a Planetary Scientist with the Space Science Division of NASA Ames, was the guest for this Space Show program. His graduate research focused on the glacially carved lakes surrounding California’s Mount Shasta — a setting that gave Priscu, after a childhood in the Mojave Desert, full-on exposure to snow and ice. We sampled roughly 6 miles out from where the Whillans’ flow meets the sea beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. They kept drilling down and announced in 1999 that they’d hit a different kind of ice that looked like frozen lake water. “I can’t say no to something that’s new and exciting,” he said. Chris McKay: I don't think we can terraform Mars, if terraforming is, as it was originally defined, making Mars suitable for human beings. The image shows Dale Andersen and Chris McKay monitoring the atmospheric methane levels at Lake Untersee in Antarctica in December 2008. That’s been a big advance for us. The water flushes through them every decade, even though the lakes have been isolated from the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. In 1996, a group headed by Russian scientists published a paper in Nature about a giant freshwater lake in Antarctica. It turns out there is quite a concentration of microbial life in the bottom of sea ice. I called them “islands of fertility in the continent,” though some skeptics doubted that the lakes were really there. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human exploration. That’s how it started, and over time I got more involved. We also discovered that methane was diffusing upward from the sediments, fueling bacteria that oxidize methane for energy. In 2000, I was the U.S. representative at a Tokyo meeting of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, on a subgroup charged with convincing funding agencies that these subglacial lakes were real. He’s also an explorer with experience in extreme environments, having led or participated in expeditions in Antarctica, the Arctic, the Atacama Desert, and Siberia. Credit: NASA Ames/Chris McKay ‘How life survives’ The Dry Valleys of Antarctica serve as a proving ground for how life can endure in inhospitable environments, such as the arid regions of Mars. But it’s different from what we see in Whillans, and the chemistry and dissolved oxygen levels are different. McKay in Antarctica, 2005 Christopher P. McKay is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center , studying planetary atmospheres , astrobiology , and terraforming . On that first trip in 1984, I stayed at Scott Base, New Zealand’s research facility. The younger Priscu listened: He played soccer at the youth, collegiate and semi-pro levels. Chris been involved in research in Mars-like environments on Earth, traveling to the Antarctic dry valleys, Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, and the Atacama desert to study life in these Mars-like environments. Also, pay attention to the competition Mars now receives for searching for life from the moons of Saturn. As Dr. McKay said, the program is in trouble and you will want to hear why he said this. And we found that enough nutrients [including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and iron] are being discharged from the lake to support a microbial ecosystem in the ocean waters below the ice. But we’ve always equated life with water. Box 95, Tiburon, CA 94920. He was a member of the board of directors of the Planetary Society and also works with the Mars Society, and has written and spoken on space exploration and terraforming. If anything, that might be a reason to scrutinize them more closely. No part of Space Show audio and video programs may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, edits, transcripts, website uploads, including YouTube or other electronic or mechanical methods, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by Fair Use under 17 U.S.C. They get their energy from the oxidation of inorganic compounds, and they get carbon from carbon dioxide. The microbial ecologist John Priscu, one of the foremost experts in the study of microorganisms that survive in frozen environments, stands in his sub-zero laboratory at Montana State University. Scott’s journals referred to Antarctica as a godawful place with nary an animal around that is alive. McKay majored in physics at Florida Atlantic University, where he also studied mechanical engineering, graduating in 1975,[1] and received his PhD in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982.[2][3]. And this time we had solid proof — measurements from an actual lake sample, without having to rely on extrapolations. There are two round little windows just eight inches in diameter in back where the passengers sit. When you see Wednesday or Thursday program options, it is because of my travel schedule and I am adding in special shows at the time chosen by the guest. One thing that’s keeping them alive is relic organic matter deposited from the ocean in an earlier geologic era. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. Metabolisms are so low that these organisms can survive by consuming this ancient food matter. This page was last edited on 15 September 2018, at 10:17. He started scuba diving when he was 16; when he’s in the mood for loftier views, he sometimes goes bush piloting in remote wilderness areas. The ice goes up and down as the lake fills and drains. Priscu in his office at Montana State University. Microbes do this by staying very close to each other, less than a micrometer apart, which makes the transfer of metabolites relatively easy. Dr. Chris McKay was the guest for this show which started out by discussing the NASA Mars program today. Zubrin, "Do Indigenous Martian Bacteria have Precedence over Human Exploration?" Extrapolating from the accretion ice, we estimated bacterial concentrations on the lake’s surface of about 100,000 cells per milliliter — about one-tenth that found in the ocean or the average non-frozen lake. Topics: Mars, life in the solar system, moons of Saturn, South Pole Station, Antarctica. Altogether, I’ve spent the fringes of three winters there — in 1991, 1995 to 1996, and 2007 to 2008. Erik returns to share his latest books and news with us, Broadcast 3592 Amanda Dreschler & Michael Livingston | Tuesday 20 Oct 2020 700PM PT, Broadcast 3593 Hotel Mars TBA | Wednesday 21 Oct 2020 300PM PT, Broadcast 3594 Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA | Friday 23 Oct 2020 930AM PT, Broadcast 3595 Dr. Erik Seedhouse | Sunday 25 Oct 2020 1200PM PT, Broadcast 3591 Dr. Jay Pasachoff | 18 Oct 2020, Broadcast 3590 Dr. Deana Weibel | 16 Oct 2020, Broadcast 3589 Hotel Mars with Bill Harwood of CBS Space News | 14 Oct 2020.

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