I think science and religion don’t mix? Don’t tell that to Mars Rover scientist Reverend Pamela Conrad

When Pastor Pamela Conrad looks at the sky, you are really looking at the sky.

At night and at odd times of the day, Conrad takes on the role of Research Scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC as a member of the Tactical Operations team at Mars Rover’s sustainable missionShe is a co-researcher in two groups of scientific instruments, which acquire and analyze data, and collaboration in team planning, with Colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and other scientific institutions across the country.

By day, the 68-year-old is an Episcopal priest, leading a congregation at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

It has long been evident that science and the humanities, not to mention science and religion, are two fields which are not mutually intelligible and which address completely different problems. This idea has weakened in recent years, as academic disciplines have given way to interdisciplinary approaches.

Conrad by training as a geologist, among other disciplines, he had other ideas.

“There is no conflict between science and religion,” she said. “Both look at the wonders of the world and our place in it. “

rocks and people

Crossing these disciplinary boundaries was not easy, at least for the pioneers, who had to overcome many institutional resistances.

“The academic system requires students to be scientists or humanists. And he doesn’t realize that the same spirit and some of the same technologies underlie both art and science, ”graphic designer and computer scientist John Maeda, a former professor at the MIT Media Lab, once told me.

“Our goal should be to produce Renaissance people with an interdisciplinary approach to problems, Da Vinci people who care about anything and can do anything.”

“I studied everything,” Konrad said. A quick glance at his references reveals that the person Maeda was talking about.

She graduated from George Washington University in the US capital, started out as a musician, and along the way discovered and loved geology. In her first year and a half, she took many science courses Before completing his bachelor’s degree in music in 1974 then adding his master’s degree in musical composition – She envisions a career as an opera singer – in 1987. She returned to science to complete her doctorate in geology in 1998.

The basis for this “ultimate” degree was an interest in how life is formed in unpromising situations, such as thermal vents in the depths of the ocean floor. Through one of those moments in the right place, at the right time, she says, she met famous director James Cameron, who scooped the profits from films like “Titanic” and built a submerged research vessel. The high seas footage Cameron filmed for IMAX 3D, the footage he later used in the sci-fi film “Avatar,” enabled Conrad to study thermal vents in greater detail than any researcher. ‘has seen it to date.

A year after graduating from her doctorate, NASA – looking for scientists to work on the geological aspects of Curiosity – hired her as A contractor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operated by the California Institute of Technology.

“We are trying to understand whether the processes that allowed life on Earth to develop and flourish took place on Mars. And if that happens, we want to know if there was life – and if not, why not? I recently told an interviewer for Alumni magazine. That’s a question she answers as actively today as when she was first hired in 1999.

The first experiments I helped design weren’t chosen – as she showed, there is massive and intense competition between NASA researchers to get their equipment on what is after all a very small gear. However, this persisted. Conrad left his post at JPL in 2010 and worked as a full-time investigator in the public service. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland until 2017. As an associate principal investigator for the analysis of samples on Mars, she worked on: Roaming of curiosity Duty and other projects as you refine the questions you explore later.

Return to Soul – Return to Mars

It wasn’t until later in his life that Conrad turned to the study of religion. After meeting an Episcopal on a blustery day on a business trip to Antarctica, she joined the Episcopal Church in her youth and then attended Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She completed her Masters of Divinity in 2017, just as the school joined Union Theological Seminary in New York. Soon after, she took command of her ward in Maryland.

When NASA was preparing for the Mars Perseverance Rover mission around the same time, one of its experiments was chosen to be included. This device is a set of tools called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), which she says “were not mature enough” to find a place in previous missions.

It aims to drive out microbial life, with instruments like a seismometer that can identify minerals and organic molecules on Mars, such as hydrogen and carbon, the building blocks of life on Earth. It also includes two high resolution cameras.

“It all brought together a great team of people, and I’m just one person on this team,” she said.

However, the search for life on Mars is no longer its top priority.

“I want this to be very clear,” Conrad said. “My first job, and my first responsibility, is now that of a church pastor. What you see on Sunday is only part of it. I have a duty to my parishioners and their needs, and in the end people should come first, people are nicer than the rocks.

However, she scored many hours in her now part-time game. As for Mars affairs, she has been working from her home office since the Covid-19 pandemic. The schedule is fast, and of course it involves two tasks It can be more than a little stressful.

Tired or not, there are lessons you would like to pass on while working as a priestess. Conrad especially insisted on the sanctity of everything.

“Understanding this is just one of the tools people need to live a decent life, live in a community and treat each other well. I think my other lesson is the virtue of walking gently, of living a calmer, more reflective life. “

She adds that the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to reflect on this and deepen her mission with these lessons in mind.

to the stars

When Konrad regrets something, they focus on his youth – for how long? The John Glenn Mercury spacecraft took to the skies in 1962She was nine years old and most importantly wanted to be an astronaut. Women have been denied this path for decades and had to be content with the distinguished and diverse path that followed. Although sprinkled with honor and intellectual excitement, she kept it connected.

Its realization broadened by adding a biblical role to its scientific role: the question of whether life could exist on other planets was transformed into something like, “If God can create life here, then God can. create – and God created – “to live in Elsewhere? The answer to that question, Konrad said, is simple:” Of course. “

She added that this life is probably germline and simple, not the aliens in our imaginations. But that will be life, and it is this quest that keeps Conrad excited and busy nonstop.

But will you go to space? Don’t rule it out.