Ending up in Space Science Was a Slow Process

One memory of my early childhood is still imprinted quite strongly in my mind. I must have been at the age of five. I remember lying on my back on a fluffy grass field and staring up into the blue afternoon sky. From time to time, white clouds were passing by and I was asking myself the question "why are clouds moving?".  My brilliant conclusion was that clouds are actually standing still in the sky, and the Earth, including me, is rotating underneath. The important role of winds in the upper atmosphere was surprisingly unknown to me at that early age. Later on, my interests shifted and I began to look more and more into the night than into the day sky. Finally, my theory found partly confirmation when applied to the movement of stars and planets across the sky.

I was involved in the Cassini mission during my Master studies in Graz and later on during my Postdoc in Iowa. Cassini was launched in 1997, and arrived at Saturn in July 2004, after almost seven years of interplanetary travel. Since then, unprecedented data from the spacecraft have not stopped to surprise and captivate scientists at the same time. The mission was initially planned for four years, but due to ongoing success and most of the instruments still in good shape, the mission is extended until 2017. I worked with data from the Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument, which is measuring electric and magnetic fields of waves in the magnetosphere of Saturn and in the surrounding solar wind plasma. The mission's end will be quite spectacular. After lifting Cassini's orbital plane from equatorial to almost polar, the spacecraft will get so close to the planet that it is passing in between Saturn's upper atmosphere and the innermost ring. At one point, Cassini will enter the atmosphere of Saturn and face its unavoidable fate: being burned and crushed by immense friction and pressure.

After finishing high school, I had absolutely no plan about what I wanted to do next. It just seemed to be right to start studying at the university. After one year of civil engineer studies, I realized that this doesn't work out for me. It is strange, but clearly knowing what I did not want actually helped me finding out what I do want. So, I switched without further ado to Geophysics, and later on, during my studies, drifted slowly further and further away from solid Earth into space. Thinking back, I never had a clear vision of ending up in space science like so many other scientists, who often refer to the moon landing, or another significant event that triggered their motivation. It was rather a slow process and evolved gradually over the many years from childhood to adulthood.

Already during my master studies, I got in touch with the field of plasma physics, especially the propagation of radio waves in plasmas. I remember spending long nights at the radio observatory Lustbuehel in my hometown Graz and recording radio emission which is generated in the magnetosphere of Jupiter. It is simply amazing that, thanks to the transmitting properties of radio waves, measuring them on Earth helps us to understand physical phenomena that take place around a distant planet.

Findings from many different satellite and spacecraft missions are of particular interest to me, not only the THEMIS data I am working with every day. Recently, it was of course "Rosetta" which I followed with great excitement; when the "Philae" lander bounced around on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and nobody really knew where the lander actually got stuck. I am also looking forward to future missions, of which two are of particular interest: the JUICE mission (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), which shall find out more about the subsurface ocean on the moon Europa, and the" New Horizons" mission, which shall deliver first close-up images of Pluto.

My future research plans probably go along with new missions being launched during the next couple of years, like MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission) or JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer). On the other hand, there are still a lot of things to learn from ongoing missions like THEMIS, CLUSTER, the Van Allen Probes or CASSINI. Although I do not want to restrict myself to a certain planet, the field of research will certainly involve waves in plasmas.

Space Science Daily Challenges

Facing challenges is the daily bread of a scientist. On the one hand, there are those which are related to scientific undertakings; when a theory doesn't work out as it should, or when data are too rubbishy to enable any useful conclusion, or when it is simply a lack of knowledge blocking a scientific breakthrough. On the other hand, there are bureaucratic challenges and such that are related to a fundamental key element in science: money. I had to learn this during my PhD study, which was only partly funded. Thanks to the encouraging support of my parents, I am still around in space science.

Young scientists who are really talented may not face a lot of problems, as long as their publication records are solid. However, young scientists these days have to be flexible. This means working on a project basis, where projects are funded for probably two or three years. After this period, one has to find the next project, and so forth. Working on a project often also includes travelling a lot and living abroad. Especially Postdocs are forced to gain experience in another country, before they can start applying for a job at their home institution.

I don't want to give suggestions to young people, because every career is individual and depends on personal tendencies and preferences. Nevertheless, I want to point out, that space science is not the promised land. Here are a few things to keep in mind when deciding for a career in space science: one has to be flexible, be willing to fight with bureaucrats for money, not getting tired of explaining why your research is of special importance (even if this is sometimes impossible), and publish papers on a regular basis (quantity beats quality).

Eleni Chatzichristou

MAARBLE Outreach Team