Re-creating Saturn's largest moon
NASA and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) are teaming up to recreate the conditions that exist on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
Dr Morgan Cable is the assistant project science systems engineer for the Cassini mission, which has been exploring Saturn’s system for 10 years. She works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, researching the extreme environments found on Saturn’s icy moons and performing lab experiments to recreate the interstellar conditions. Her Australian collaborator, Dr Helen Maynard-Casely, is a planetary scientist at ANSTO.
After Dr Cable’s team identified a new material on Titan, Dr Maynard Casely was able to recreate the moon’s -179.2°C temperature using the Australian Synchrotron. This enabled her to determine the atomic structure of the material — a co-crystal formed by molecules of benzene and ethane, with types of chemical bonds that haven’t been found in planetary materials before.
Now there are more questions to answer about the new material — questions which have brought Dr Cable all the way to ANSTO’s headquarters in Lucas Heights, Sydney.
“Dr Cable and I have worked together to analyse the material at our synchrotron in Melbourne, and now we will be using one of our neutron instruments, Wombat, to conduct further studies,” said Dr Maynard-Casely.
“Basically, we can already know the structure of material, but now we are looking at how it is held together, and the instruments at Lucas Heights are potentially more able to detect the hydrogen that could be key to working this out.
“When we first saw the material, one of our first questions was ‘why are you staying together?’ Over the new few days, we will trying to test whether hydrogen holds the answer.”
As part of her visit Down Under, Dr Cable will be presenting a public talk about her research, experiences and career so far at NASA. The talk is part of the Gender Equity series and is supported by the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) team at ANSTO.
Dr Cable’s talk will be held on Wednesday, 8 June from 4–5 pm at the AINSE Theatre, adjacent to the ANSTO Discovery Centre at Lucas Heights. To register for the free event, visit www.morgancable.eventbrite.com.au.
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