Ahmad A. Malik
6 dispatches · Kīlauea
America in Space: The Long Trip Back to the Moon—and Beyond
Forty-three years had passed since an American astronaut last set foot on another world when NASA launched SSERVI in 2013, funding nine research teams, including RIS4E, to rebuild the scientific foundation for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. Scientists and program managers argued that sustained, predictable funding, not another Apollo-scale surge, was the only path back to the Moon and on to Mars.
ReadSage of the Expedition
Dean Eppler, a geologist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with four decades of fieldwork behind him, served as crew team leader for the RIS4E field test at Kīlauea in June 2015. A veteran of spacesuit development and EVA planning, he guided the team through simulated extravehicular activities on the lava flows, drawing on a career’s worth of geological intuition to define how astronauts should conduct science on Mars.
ReadA Geologist in the Violin Section
Debra Hurwitz, a planetary geologist on post-doctoral assignment at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, joined the RIS4E crew team at Kīlauea in June 2015 on a self-funded basis, simulating the extravehicular activities astronauts would one day carry out on Mars. Alongside that crew work, she pursued separate research into how lava forms and its role in the planetary evolution of the solar system.
ReadAstro Dome
While the RIS4E team worked Kīlauea’s lava fields in June 2015, another NASA-funded experiment was ending nearby atop Mauna Loa. Commander Martha Lenio and five crewmates had spent eight months inside a 36-foot dome on the volcano’s slope, living as if on the surface of Mars, to help researchers understand the human challenges of long-duration spaceflight.
ReadScience of His Own Design
Juergen Thieme spent six years overseeing construction of the X-ray Spectroscopy Beamline at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source II, a nearly billion-dollar instrument he had designed himself. As a RIS4E Theme 4 collaborator, he planned to use that beamline to analyze rock samples returned from the June 2015 Kīlauea field test, a method scientists could one day apply to lunar or Martian samples.
ReadA Down-to-Earth Space Traveler
Astronaut Rick Mastracchio spent ten days on the Big Island of Hawaii in June 2015 as a member of the RIS4E field study, simulating extra-vehicular activities across the lava flows of Kīlauea. A veteran of four missions and 53 hours of spacewalks, fifth-most in history, Mastracchio brought practical spaceflight expertise to help scientists refine the instruments and operational techniques needed for future planetary missions.
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