Speaker Series: NASA Scientist Christopher McKay
“The Search for Life on Mars and Europa”
A NASA planetary scientist involved in the planning for human settlements on Mars will speak at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, on Tuesday, April 17.
Christopher McKay’s discussion, “The Search for Life on Mars and Europa,” is a joint presentation of the college’s annual Speaker Series and the Open House Nights in Astronomy outreach program sponsored by the School of Science. His talk is free and open the public, and will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the McGarvey Commons of the Reed Union Building. Astronomical viewing from the college’s Mehalso Observatory will follow, weather permitting.
McKay has worked as a research scientist in NASA’s Space Science Division since receiving his doctoral degree in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982. He was a co-investigator for the 2005 Huygens Probe, a NASA collaboration with the European Space Agency. After a seven-year ride to Saturn aboard the Cassini orbiter, Huygens was deployed to Titan, where it relayed chemical and other measurements from the cloudy atmosphere of Saturn’s moon. McKay currently is co-investigator for biological interpretation on this summer’s Phoenix Mars Mission. That probe, to be launched in August, will study the history of water on the planet, and the habitability potential of the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.
“Although the 1976 Viking results may indicate that Mars has no life today, there is direct geomorphological evidence that, in the past, Mars had large amounts of liquid water on its surface, possibly due to a thicker atmosphere,” McKay said. “From a biological perspective, the existence of liquid water by itself motivates the question of the origin of life on Mars.”
McKay’s broad research interest is determining the relationship between these chemical and physical evolutions in the solar system and the origins of life. Because scientists expect any life found on other plants to be extremophile--organisms that thrive in acutely severe environments—McKay conducts much of his research on overlooked life in the dry valleys of the Antarctic and the Siberian and Canadian artic. “Ecosystems in cold, dry locations on Earth, such as the Antarctic, provide examples of how life on Mars might have survived, and where to look for fossils,” he said.
For his contributions to the field, McKay is a recipient of the prestigious Urey Award from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. He and Robert Zubrin,author of The Case for Mars and enthusiastic supporter of space colonization, frequently and publicly debate the ethics of terraforming, the theoretical possibility of altering another planet’s atmosphere for human habitation. Although his work at NASA involves planning for future human settlements, McKay argues that a planet must be thoroughly explored for microbial life before any human intervention can occur, and that if indigenous life is found, terraforming should support its growth, not ours.
For more information about the Speaker Series or to arrange special accommodations for participation, phone the Penn State Behrend Office of Student Activities at 814-898-6171.