After being at the forefront of the mission to Mars, aerospace engineer Farah Alibay will once again embark on the discovery of space in a new project that will try to demystify the origin of the universe and the formation galaxies.
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“It’s a smaller project than my last one, but I have a bigger role in the development team, so I’m excited to take on the new challenge! “said the Quebecer in a publication on Facebook.
Photo taken from Facebook
Farah Alibay
Leaving the red planet and the rover Perseverance for the “first time in quite a while”, she will take on the role of chief flight systems engineer for the SPHEREx mission, a telescope which is due to take off no later than April 2025.
It will collect data for two years on more than 300 million galaxies, some of which “so distant that their lights took 10 billion years to reach Earth”, can we read on the website of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory .
It will orbit around the Earth.
The telescope will also scan more than 100 million stars present in the Milky Way in search of water and organic molecules that could help explain where this essential substance for life comes from.
SPHEREx will focus in particular near “stellar nurseries”, ie regions of space where stars are born, and near disks surrounding stars, where planets can form.
Using near-infrared light, the telescope will make several captures of the sky to create a complete map in color resolution “far” exceeding the previous ones, explains the NASA site.
woman in science
Well known for her defense of diversity and the place of women in science, Farah Alibay stood out in the command team of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars almost a year ago. .
The robot, which has not yet completed its mission, must collect around twenty samples near an ancient Martian delta which could have harbored life in the past, in an attempt to find traces of ancient microbacterial life.
These samples will be recovered and brought back to Earth in 2031, during a future mission.
The engineer was also responsible for coordinating the operations of the Ingenuity helicopter, which made the very first flight on another planet.