Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

As NASA’s Artemis II was in the middle of its epic sling around the moon, DEEPS Professor James Head and John “Jack’’ Mustard spoke with the Boston Globe about the revolutionary science of the mission. From live meteoroid impact flashes to ancient far-side lava flows, scientists anticipate groundbreaking discoveries from Artemis’s unprecedented lunar observations.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected what could be a chemical relic of long-ago life on Mars: long-chain organic molecules likely derived from fatty acids, a common building block of cell membranes on Earth. DEEPS Professor Jack Mustard commented on these exciting findings, suggesting that Curiosity’s successor, Perseverance, will likely find similar molecules.

NASA has announced a new strategy review team, including DEEPS Professor Jack Mustard, to assess potential architecture adjustments for the agency’s Mars Sample Return Program. The program aims to bring back scientifically selected samples from Mars, and is a key step in NASA’s quest to better understand our solar system and help answer whether we are alone in the universe.