Jupiter, the limits of the Solar System and Venusthey are the destinations of three ambitious NASA missions. The first two are already underway, and the third, pending approval. Adriana Ocampo pilots them like a space heroine. Born in Colombia and raised in Buenos Aires, this planetary geologist has been working for the US space agency for almost 40 years.
Its management will be essential so that nothing goes wrong in two extremely complex missions:New Horizons , heading to Plutoand the Kuiper object belt, at the edge of the Solar System; YJuno , bound for Jupiter. He is also behind a trip to Venus that is currently competing fiercely with other projects. Adriana Ocampo Uria, director of the New Frontiers Program, in NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division, has told us the details of her delicate work and her future projects.
For the 56-year-old Ocampo, designing an interplanetary mission means helping select proposals made by hundreds of specialists at dozens of universities, defining scientific priorities, overseeing the construction of the ships with an eagle’s eye and, once in space, ensure that scientific objectives are met. Her position even requires being a bit of a psychologist when things aren’t going well. “You have to know what the important questions are for each project and ensure that they conform to NASA’s 2013-2023 plan,” he summarizes in a telephone interview. His voice, sweet and slow, has the musical accent of the Buenos Aires where he grew up. “In addition to identifying the Space Scientific talent, I must choose people who are leaders and good spokespersons. I also have to make economic cuts when necessary. Although the saddest thing is to call the rejected; it breaks your heart. Because preparing such proposals not only They cost between one and two million dollars, but sometimes it involves sacrificing family life. It is a personal drama. ” The Juno mission, which will arrive at Jupiter in 2016, was no stranger to these kinds of challenges. The constant budget snips delayed the launch of the ship twice. In 2005, the year the project was approved, Ocampo was transferred from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in California, to the NASA offices in the capital.
“The name is very appropriate,” he explains. And he adds:? To hide his misdeeds, the Roman god Jupiter surrounded himself with a thick layer of clouds. But his wife, the indomitable Juno, had the gift of looking through them and discovering the true nature of her husband. That is exactly what the Juno created by mortals will do. Apart from complementing the observations made by the Galileo probe in 2003, it will trace a polar orbit, instead of the equatorial one described by its predecessor. On the other hand, it will be the spacecraft that travels the furthest from the Sun exclusively with solar panels. Made with gallium arsenide, they will generate 400 watts of electricity. That will be enough to power the nine instruments embedded within the titanium case that forms the body of Juno ?. With its three solar panels constantly rotating and exposed to the weak Jovian sun, it looks like a windmill, although Ocampo prefers to see it as a three-winged bird. Your biggest challenge will be surviving the radiation from the gas giant. “It is so intense that we only expect it to last 32 orbits, that is, less than a year,” says the planetary geologist.
Since Jupiter is so huge – almost a failed star, as some experts describe it – it was able to retain its original composition, unlike Earth, which has established itself as a rocky planet. It probably appeared at an early stage in the Solar System, capturing the Sun’s leftover hydrogen and helium. It is even thought to be the first planet to condense. The interesting thing is to know, points out the scientist, how exactly it was born: Did a massive nucleus composed of comets first exist that gravitationally captured the gas? Or did an unstable region collapse within the primordial nebula? Located just 4,800 kilometers above the dense Jovian clouds, Juno will measure the amount of water and ammonia in the atmosphere, and determine if it has a solid core. To reveal another mystery, that of its enormous auroras and its lethal radiation, it will map gravitational and magnetic fields. Let us remember that its magnetosphere is the largest in our neighborhood after that of the Sun.
Fusion of storms
“King Jupiter influences his entire court, made up of 63 moons,” says Ocampo with a laugh. ? Given its evolution – it emits more energy than it receives and is super dynamic – we want to know what is beating in its heart. And now we have an extraordinary fact: a new cyclonic center has been created south of the Great Red Spot, that hurricane that is twice the size of the Earth. Arthur C. Clarke proposed a similar scenario in his science fiction novel2001. A space odyssey. For three months we watched two storms come together to form a larger one. And now it has changed color. The Great Red Spot, which has existed for at least 400 years – when Galileo observed it with the first telescope – is shrinking, while another appears to be emerging?
Adriana Ocampo’s scientific adventures began 50 years ago on the terrace of a Buenos Aires house. Then, little Adriana would take the controls of her ship of sheets and cardboard, put on her head a drainer for spaghetti, decorated with skewers of meat, as antennas, and set off for the Moon with the dog-copilot Tauro and the doll-astronaut Juanita. “Juanita had an aluminum foil suit, and I gave Taurus his own helmet-strainer,” he recalls. “But the best thing was to explore lunar craters never seen by man.”
Those impact craters have marked the life of Ocampo. 20 years after his childhood games, he hit the jackpot: the huge hole left by aChicxulub meteorite, hypothetical responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. “The idea came to me during a congress in Mexico, when I saw an image of the Yucatan peninsula taken by the Landsat satellite,” he explains. “Cenotes – caves filled with water that open on the surface – appeared lined up in a giant semicircle. Could it be the footprint of a crater hidden deep underground?”
Traces of crime
During several scientific expeditions, Ocampo found solid signs of the brutal collision: quartz crystals with lines caused by the pressure wave that moved radially from the point of impact; rocks with pebbles with irregular edges such as nuts or raisins in a cookie; a lot of iridium, an element found in abundance only in asteroids and comets; and tektites, that is, rocks melted and thrown hundreds of kilometers by the collision. The correct formation in the correct geological layer. Bingo. “First we sent the study to the journal Science”, recalls the geologist. “After reviewing it for almost a year, they rejected it. It was a huge frustration. So we sent it to Nature, who published it in 1991.” From then on, Ocampo’s eyes light up when someone asks him to review a photograph or evidence of a possible impact crater.
Lately, her pulse is racing when Venus is mentioned to her, too. “It is a half-forgotten planet, if it were not for the mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) 1. After the failed attempt of the Japanese probe Akatsuki, in 2010, due to a problem in the propulsion system, we are trying to combine forces with ESA and JAXA, the Japanese agency. The aforementioned 2013-2023 plan places Venus in fourth position on the list, and international collaboration plays a key role. ” To this end, Ocampo is in charge of the Analysis Group for the Exploration of Venus. “We are convening all stakeholders in the scientific community to come and start conversations and set priorities,” he announces.
“My dream is that a university in Latin America can collaborate with components or instruments in a future mission. It is not that difficult. The first thing is that, little by little, the region will think about the space and the benefits that it can provide to each country. Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina already have committees dedicated to this issue. ” Ocampo is not new to these struggles. At least two decades ago he helped create the first Space Conference of the Americas. “Exploration is capable of improving the standard of living of a nation, inspiring future generations and identifying innovative solutions to current problems. Latin America is in a position to embrace the new space age, but it needs to develop a regional policy with decisions at the governmental level. “, concludes this space captain.
Angela Posada-Swafford
