Curiosity leads scientist/engineer to off-world exploration
For Betina Pavri, who recently took up the role of senior principal engineer at Paihau—Robinson Research Institute, having an intense interest in what happens here on Earth has led to a lifetime of study and work looking beyond this planet.
“I've always been very curious. I love exploring my environment, whether walking along the beach and seeing what interesting things I can find or going hiking and finding weird rocks, fossils, plants and birds. I'm curious about everything. And that led me to an interest in science.”
“I ended up getting my masters in planetary science,” she says, “looking at the other planets in the solar system—what can we learn about them and how does that contribute towards our understanding of Earth and its history and evolution?
“As a resident of planet Earth, I have a vested interest in making sure that we understand our own planet and how it evolves over time and how we might be changing it. Studying other planets is a good way for us to better understand how the Earth could change over time.”
Betina has come to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to join the team at Paihau—Robinson working on the development of high temperature superconducting magnets for use in space.
“While the team here has a lot of expertise in the development of these magnets, they don’t have a strong background in developing those technologies for use in space,” she says. “My background is in developing instruments and operating them in space. I joined the team to bring that expertise to help make the mission a success.”
Betina’s track record of sending instruments successfully into space is extensive. She chose to develop her career at JPL so that she could work at the interface of science and engineering. JPL launches robotic missions to study the other planets in the solar system, like the Mars Rovers and the orbiters that study other planets in our solar system.
“A background in both engineering and science gives me a good way to talk to both the people who develop the technologies (the engineers) and the users (the scientists) and understand how to help those two groups communicate. I help the engineers design what the scientists need and work with the scientists to make sure that it's operating successfully.”
Dawn was an early mission she worked on for several years, studying two asteroids in the asteroid belt: Vesta (closer to the sun and mostly rocky) and Ceres (mostly ice). Betina helped develop the instruments that would answer scientists’ questions about these asteroids: what they were made of; how they might have evolved over time; and the kind of minerals and elements present on the surface.
“After my work on the Dawn mission concluded, I started on the Mars Curiosity mission. Dawn had three science instruments on it and Mars Curiosity had 10, so a higher level of difficulty, but both were rewarding in their own ways and great teams to work with,” she says. “Mars Curiosity Rover recently celebrated 10 years exploring the surface of Mars, so that was a very exciting capstone to my career so far.”
International collaboration
The element of co-operation and teamwork in these projects is important to Betina. Most of NASA’s missions involve international collaboration, which she says has always been one of her favourite parts of the job—working with colleagues around the world to solve the difficult questions inherent in these complex programmes.
When she heard about Paihau—Robinson’s proposal to apply the technology of high temperature superconducting magnets (HTSMs) to problems such as developing more efficient thrusters for spacecraft, she was hooked.
“Both my partner (Randy Pollock) and I really enjoy traveling and learning about different places and cultures. An opportunity to work with a new team in a new environment here in New Zealand was very hard to pass up. So, we didn't!” she says.
Betina has found learning about superconducting magnet technology fascinating, and its application to improving the efficiency of thrusters is the focus of the current project.
“One of the challenges of operating satellites in space is how to manoeuvre them,” she says. “Getting them into space is accomplished with a rocket. But once they're in space, you need to keep them oriented in a certain direction. Or you may need to move them around a little in their orbit to avoid space debris, for example. Or if their orbits decay over time due to atmospheric drag, you might need to lift them up again a little further from the Earth.
“This is a real life-limiting factor for satellites. If you run out of fuel for manoeuvring, that's the end of your mission. Anything we can do to extend the life of these satellites, which are very expensive to build, is a great step forward.”
Using a magnetic field in concert with the thruster can make the thruster much more efficient and use fewer resources—essentially less fuel to get the same amount of performance. On a spacecraft, one thing that limits the work is how much power can be generated, which may depend on, for example, solar panels to pull power from the sun.
“You don't have an infinite amount of power to work with,” says Betina. “Anything you can do to make the system operate more efficiently and require less power can be a huge benefit.
“People have experimented with using very powerful electromagnets, but these require a huge amount of power and a huge amount of cooling because of all that power going into them. The high-temperature superconductors can use a lot less power to accomplish the same result, which is why this technology is exciting for the application on the space thruster.”
Safe for space
Betina’s field of expertise is in how to validate that something will be reliable in space. What electronic components do you use so that they will be resistant to radiation? How do you test it to make sure it can withstand the extremes of temperature or the amount of vibration that it might experience in the launch from the Earth to space?
The concept now is to demonstrate the high temperature superconducting magnet technology on a space platform and—on the ground—demonstrate the use of such magnets in parallel with the thruster, with the idea that in the future these two could be used together.
“We are proceeding in a stepwise way that allows us to make sure that we understand each step well and can make incremental improvements as we go along,” she says. “To the hundreds of users and providers of spacecraft and the users of the technologies they enable, this is an exciting step forward for the technology.
“But of course, since it's new, we need to show that not only is it theoretically possible, but it’s also something that can be made practical for use by many users on an industrial scale. That would be a potential next step.
“For now, we just need to demonstrate the concept. That's the first part of the process.”
Encouraging curiosity, questioning
Outside work, another of Betina’s passions is encouraging a more diverse set of young people to get into science and technical fields.
“I think it's crucial,” she says. “We need all sorts of people to get involved and bring their various perspectives, backgrounds and the way they see the world to solving science and technical issues. We need to encourage curiosity and questioning at every level—from little kids all the way through to university students. Anything we can do to accomplish that is important for so many of the problems we're being faced with.
“And quite frankly, there's just so much bad misinformation out there that confuses people. I think it's so vital that we communicate to people the importance of science and the importance of the scientific approach to solving the problems we all face.
“If you give people the tools to solve problems, it's very empowering. It's at least a partial antidote to feeling that there are so many problems in the world and there's nothing you can do. You can show them that problems have been and can be solved.
“We're going to find things that we would do differently in the future, but the only way to know that is to try it and learn from what works and doesn't work. And if you're a curious person like me, that's what you live for: to solve these mysteries and figure out where the next problem is, then work on fixing that!”