SOUTH KINGSTOWN – A trio of University of Rhode Island researchers were awarded a $735,000 grant by the NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research to study methane gas emissions at a northern California site that has a rock system comparable to known sites on Mars, the university announced Wednesday.
URI said that over the next three years, Dawn Cardace and Soni Pradhanang, associate professors of geosciences, and Serena Moseman-Valtierra, an associate professor of biological sciences, hope to broaden the scientific understanding of methane emissions in ultramafic rock systems. The work, the university said, could help answer the question as to whether or not there was, or is, microbial life on Mars.
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Cardace, Pradhanang and Moseman-Valtierra will measure methane emissions at a serpentine-rich landscape in California, URI said, and will perform work during both cold and warm seasons to observe seasonal variations. Such work will create a data set that, according to the university, could be vital to scientists determining origins of methane on Mars.
“This project has immediate applicability for ongoing field projects across Rhode Island,” Moseman-Valtierra said in a statement. “Our new tools and collaboration could improve a lot of ongoing science and also rebuild relationships that have lapsed because of COVID-19.”
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
