Many people associate NASA with space exploration, landing a rover on Mars… but they would be surprised to learn that much of NASA’s research is actually applied on Earth. From early disease detection to monitoring climate change, the technology developed at NASA is extremely relevant to all of us and our planet. In this interview,
José V. Siles explains how scientific balloons are flown and operated from Anctartica, where he joined a mission in 2015-2016. At the moment, he is preparing for his next Anctartica mission in 2023.
José V. Siles is a radio frequency engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. His research area is known as planetary science, i.e. the study of the celestial bodies that orbit stars, with a particular focus on our own solar system. Dr. Siles was the recipient of the 2012 NASA/JPL Outstanding Postdoctoral Research Award and the 2014 NASA Outstanding Group Achievement Award for the Development of Compact Multi-Pixel Receivers for Planetary Science. He was awarded in 2016 with the U.S. Antarctic Service Medal. In 2018, he received the prestigious JPL Lew Allen Award for Excellence.
Every mission starts with a scientific question, right? And it could be a broad question like, where we’re coming from? Or, how life originated on Earth? Or, could there be life in any other place in the solar system, or elsewhere?
External Resources
The episode was originally published on this page.
The full transcript of episode is available here.
Go back to Technoculture Podcast Introductory article
Featured image credit: Federica Bressan
- technoculture podcast – Episode #14: Rick A. Ruth - 24 May, 2021
- Technoculture Podcast – Episode #13: ward peeters - 26 April, 2021
- Technoculture Podcast – Episode #12: Aleš Vaupotič - 22 March, 2021
EuroScientist journal 