From UPV to NASA

The dream of Angélica Anglés Estellés (Valencia, 1983) is to play the piano on Mars. She does not know if she will be able to fulfil it. Still, if one thing is clear to this graduate of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and current collaborator of the Icelandic Space Agency, NASA and the Institute for Space Exploration in Macao (China), it is that the arrival of human beings on the red planet "is no longer a utopia".

"Children in primary school today will be able to decide whether they want to live on Mars or not," she says emphatically. "Maybe not me, as I may be too late, but I'm sure that someone will be able to play the piano on Mars in 30-, 40- or 50 years", continues Anglés, a graduate in piano and composer of musical pieces with which she sometimes accompanies her Lectures on the planet that has occupied her mind since she was a child.

"When I was very young, my grandfather always talked to me about the stars and, above all, about Mars. I remember going to kindergarten and thinking, 'Is there life in the universe? What about Mars? Are we alone in the Solar System? Since then, I have always moved in that direction, and now as a scientist, after studying the subject in depth, I think that Mars is really the only planet where life may have existed," says Anglés, who recently returned to the UPV to give a lecture at her former school - the School of Engineering in Geodesy, Cartography and Surveying (ETSIGCT) - and also, weeks later, as an ambassador for Praktikum 2024.

" A lot of people are surprised that I studied at the ETSICGT for what I do; they tell me that it has nothing to do with Mars," says Anglés. "Actually, it has a lot to do with Mars," he adds, "because a large part of my work is studying the Martian surface with orbital images, the minerals on the surface and in the subsoil... and I learned all that here, at the UPV.

6 languages and an impressive professional career

Anglés, who at the time had to change Spain for China "because, at least then, there were no funds here to carry out the expeditions I do", speaks six languages - she speaks fluent English and Mandarin, as well as Spanish and Valencian. She is fluent in German and Swedish; she has a double Master’s in Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics from both Imperial College London and University College London, a Master’s in Geomatics from the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) and her PhD from the University of Hong Kong in the area of Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences, dealt with the possibility of life on Mars and the selection and future return of Martian samples.

In addition, Angelica was part of the group that selected the landing site for the Mars 2020 probe at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and has recently been one of the 5 analogue astronauts of the first UK Analogue Space Mission.

What are analogue missions, and why are they essential today?

"As humans can't go to Mars right now, one of the ways we can study the planet and the possible existence of life there is to explore places on Earth that look a lot like Mars. These are what we call Mars analogues. They are very extreme places, with very cold temperatures, like Antarctica, or very arid, like Tibet, which is the highest desert in the world," explains the former UPV student, who has made expeditions to Pilbara (Australia), Lake Ciso (Spain), the French Pyrenees, the hot springs of Rotorua (New Zealand) and the Qaidam Basin (Tibet), among others.

"What I do is go to these places with my team and collect as many samples as possible to analyse them in the lab and see how certain organisms survive in such extreme conditions," he says.

NASA's Perseverance rover

However, although humans have not yet set foot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, NASA's robotic rover that is part of the Mars 2020 mission to explore the red planet, has been there.

"Perseverance, which I worked with, is a walking laboratory. It has arms; it takes samples, analyses them and sends the data back to Earth. It's never the same as a scientist analysing them in the laboratory. Still, it's a first approximation that tells us what the composition of the rock is, if there are organic compounds, and from there we can continue".

In any case, "Perseverance " will have a second part in the mission, and it is assumed that, in about 10 years, it will bring back a few small tubes with samples. That's going to be incredible because that's where we're going to have the physical samples, and that will be definitive to know if, at least where the rover is placed, there was life at some point".

Mars, very similar to Earth... 3,000 million years ago

Anglés, who admits that she would "love" to be part of the second part of the Perseverance project, explains that "what we are looking for, more than present life, is a past life, biomarkers because 3,000 million years ago, Mars was very similar to Earth. It had an atmosphere, liquid water... all the ingredients for the existence of life. Could there be life now? Maybe. I doubt one on the surface is exposed to such extreme conditions, but there might be one on the subsurface, caves, or lava tubes. Until we go to Mars, we won't be able to see that.

And that, although she is more aware than ever of its difficulty, that continues to be the dream of this little girl whose grandfather spoke to her as a child about the red planet: to travel to it.

She dedicates her life to trying to achieve it... and her smile gives her away. Deep down, she sees herself achieving it.

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