Rosemary Coogan

Last week: studying the Ries impact crater in Germany! ☄️

The crater is around 25km wide and was created from an asteroid impact 15 million years ago. Although Earth has experienced many impacts over its lifetime, a lot of evidence for that has gone, as the tectonic plates move and wipe away the craters - unlike the more preserved craters we see on the Moon 🌒

Thanks to this great analogue environment and our wonderful instructors, we studied:

⁃the processes involved in giant impacts: creating craters and rims and upturned material, sometimes coming from deep inside the planet
⁃how to estimate the age of the lunar surface based on the number and appearance of its craters
⁃how to plan spacewalks on the Moon in order to cross as many different surfaces as possible, to look for water and other volatiles, and find the most interesting lunar samples 🪨

Just one stop left on the course - volcanism in Lanzarote! 🌋

I found this incredible - the first micrometeorite, found in 2015, was spotted by Jon Larsen as it sat on the table beside his food (it’s barely possible to see in the mock-up photo - next to the bowl of strawberries). Micrometeorites are the same size as what I would think of as dust (stardust in this case!), and yet they’re so varied and colorful. What a discovery!

It’s been an eye-opening first week of PANGAEA training with @Arno_astro, @Astro_Kanai and the @ESA_CAVES team! We’ve been learning which geological features are important to identify and how to report them - which is especially important for future exploration missions to the Moon and beyond, where astronauts will act as the eyes of the specialists on ground. The highlights so far:

- learning how to read the story of the Dolomites over millions of years, through its rocks and outcrops (showing whether there used to be volcanic activity, rivers, lakes etc)
- finding ancient fossils of extinct reptiles in the Bletterbach canyon, and
- studying a wonderful meteorite collection brought by the experts - including some incredible Lunar and Martian samples!

Next week we’ll be focussing on the lunar landscape through an impact crater in the south of Germany that serves as a great analogue.

I hope our instructors will be proud of us - Nemo and I were admiring some great local rocks near a service station on our road trip to Germany today 🤩

I loved talking to so many schoolchildren excited about space and science today 🤩

We also had a chance to meet the incredibly gifted international teams of students taking part in this year’s rocketry challenge 🚀

I had the pleasure of chatting with @claranellist and Jessica Ashley this week, who are championing STEM for all 🔬

And chatted with @AstroJohnMcFall @astro_meganne and @dallascampbell about our journeys so far. Amazing end to the week 😊

It was a pleasure to speak to @MattBarbet about all things ISS and the Moon on Sky News this morning. Thanks so much for having me!