Shaping planetary sciences at Stanford
Eva Scheller designs and plans spacecraft instruments, including Mars rovers and satellites, and analyzes the data to understand the formation, evolution, and habitability of planetary bodies.
As told to Danielle Torrent Tucker
I’m doing something that’s merging geology and geochemistry with spacecraft and spacecraft missions, and what we call planetary sciences. This is something I’ve been interested in since I was a kid. I was looking back at all my school reports, and I had this obsession with rocks and minerals and stuff, and then I also had this obsession with space and planets, but not really aliens. A lot of people in my field are obsessed with aliens, but I always was obsessed with rocks and planetary bodies.
I’m from Denmark originally, and we don’t have a space agency. But then I came to America for exchange studies, and I went to Caltech and got introduced to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And that’s when I realized, “Whoa, you can, as a scientist, work on all these spacecraft missions.”
My PhD was focused on how different types of chemistry in minerals would affect the climate of Mars over time. One of my first big papers was on Mars’ water in the past. People thought its water would primarily have been lost through exospheric escape processes, basically water drifting into space and disappearing. What I suggested from doing work observing with satellite spacecraft is that there’s actually quite a lot of water in the ground, and that gets incorporated chemically into the structures of the rocks that comprise the underground – and that can make the climate transition.
I was part of the team that selected the landing site for the Mars rover, and then I worked on the SHERLOC instrument, which was the main instrument that was assigned to look for organic compounds on Mars. I did quite a bit of engineering work, because this instrument had some troubles, and it eventually led to discoveries for the first time using this kind of instrumentation, which is called Raman spectroscopy. It led us to find some of these interesting salt chemicals that we use to trace the chemistry of water on Mars.
Now, here at Stanford, I’m doing something new. One of the most exciting missions coming out of NASA is Europa Clipper, and I’m preparing a laboratory with a chamber that can simulate the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. The primary reason I was drawn to Stanford is because it is investing heavily into my field of planetary science. Now there are at least five full-on planetary scientists. We’re all really young, so I think we’re kind of shaping what this field is going to look like at Stanford and in the Bay Area. It’s really cool to be around all these young people who have the same interests.
Aside from doing science, I enjoy creative writing, and so I’m working on some novels not at all related to science. Then, of course, I like hiking. I hiked to Everest Base Camp and I got engaged underneath Mount Everest. I like painting and I’m very into mindfulness and meditation. I do a lot of yoga. I am also a dancer and have danced in many styles over the years, mostly K-pop, hiphop, and traditional Asian dances. I hope to support the Stanford community dance teams if they need any faculty support.
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