Briana Lionetti
4 dispatches · Potrillo Volcanic Field
Chasing Moon Dust
Since Apollo astronauts returned from the Moon sneezing and congested, scientists have known lunar dust poses a health risk, but not how serious. A team of biomedical researchers at Stony Brook University joined the RIS4E project to find out, slicing mouse lungs, probing inflammation, and measuring how lunar simulant reacts with water to produce compounds linked to lung cancer.
ReadDrones Over Potrillo: Seeing Planet Science from a New Angle
Two RIS4E scientists, Stephen Scheidt of the University of Arizona and Jose Hurtado of UT El Paso, flew drones over Kilbourne Hole and Aden Crater in June 2017 to build centimeter-scale three-dimensional maps of the terrain. The aerial surveys identified safe footing for simulated moonwalks and provided the missing layer of data between satellite imagery and ground-level measurements.
ReadMeeting the Volcano
Volcanoes don’t always look like volcanoes. Reporting alongside the RIS4E team at the Potrillo volcanic field in June 2017, a journalist walked the rim of Kilbourne Hole, a maar blasted open 24,000 years ago when groundwater met rising magma, and learned why two craters that sit just ten miles apart were born in entirely different ways.
ReadDay 1: Paramedical Adventures
The first day at Kilbourne Hole tested the RIS4E team, and the journalists covering it, in ways no one had quite anticipated. Temperatures hit 105 degrees, two scientific instruments failed from the heat, and the drive back to El Paso turned into an 8.5-mile wrong-way detour toward the Mexican border.
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