59 min listen
Weekly Space Hangout: June 23, 2021 – Making Soil for Space Habitats with Dr. Jane Shevtsov
Weekly Space Hangout: June 23, 2021 – Making Soil for Space Habitats with Dr. Jane Shevtsov
ratings:
Length:
54 minutes
Released:
Jun 25, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This week we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Jane Shevtsov, Mathematical Biology Instructor at UCLA, to the WSH. Her project proposal, Making Soil for Space Habitats by Seeding Asteroids with Fungi, is one of NASA's 2021 NIAC Phase I selections. Jane is a systems ecologist who teaches math for life sciences at UCLA and is developing ways of using fungi to make soil for space habitats with TransAstra Corporation. Jane has a BS in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution from UCLA and a PhD in Ecology from the University of Georgia. As a graduate student, she studied ecological networks, developing a new computational method for tracking stocks and flows in them and conducting field research on species interactions in the Smoky Mountains. She then started working at UCLA, helping develop a new math curriculum for life science majors that focuses on making and analyzing models of biological systems. She co-authored the textbook Modeling Life: The Mathematics of Biological Systems, which was published in 2017. Jane has always been interested in space and applying ecology to life support systems, since this is just designing ecosystems. As a student, she interned at Kennedy Space Center twice, working in the Space Life Sciences Lab. In 2018, she met Joel Sercel of TransAstra at a local science fiction convention and ended up outlining a bioregenerative life support system for a large space habitat. She then got the idea of using fungi to break down carbonaceous asteroids to make soil, which was funded by NASA's NIAC program. She is currently conducting that research and developing other ideas for applying systems ecology and biomimicry to space travel. She is also interested in the social and political aspects of space exploration and how we might go into space as a unified human species. To learn more about her NIAC proposal, visit the project's NASA webpage (https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2021_Phase_I/Making_Soil_for_Space_Habitats/) **************************************** The Weekly Space Hangout is a production of CosmoQuest. Want to support CosmoQuest? Here are some specific ways you can help: ► Subscribe FREE to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/cosmoquest ► Subscribe to our podcasts Astronomy Cast and Daily Space where ever you get your podcasts! ► Watch our streams over on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/cosmoquestx – follow and subscribe! ► Become a Patreon of CosmoQuest https://www.patreon.com/cosmoquestx ► Become a Patreon of Astronomy Cast https://www.patreon.com/astronomycast ► Buy stuff from our Redbubble https://www.redbubble.com/people/cosmoquestx ► Join our Discord server for CosmoQuest - https://discord.gg/X8rw4vv ► Join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew! - http://www.wshcrew.space/ Don't forget to like and subscribe! Plus we love being shared out to new people, so tweet, comment, review us... all the free things you can do to help bring science into people's lives.
Released:
Jun 25, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (79)
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