The engineer and scientist from Madrid Michela Muñoz Fernández works at NASA, and not by chance. Since she was very young, she set out to join the US space agency and, with determination, mapped out an academic and professional plan to achieve it.
Almost 25 years ago, she became the first Spanish woman to be hired by NASA, where she has been part of prominent missions such as Juno, dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of Jupiter, the Artemis program, to return to the Moon, or the spacecraft Psyche, designed to explore this enigmatic metallic asteroid.
"I have always loved studying and learning; I have never stopped educating myself throughout my life, and that has helped me advance in my career and fulfill my dream," says Muñoz, who is currently the Program Executive for Mars Sample Return (MSR). This is the ambitious robotic project that aims to bring Martian rocks to Earth for the first time - rocks currently being collected by the robotic vehicle (rover) Perseverance, which landed on Mars in February 2021.
Muñoz holds this position at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Although we usually associate the space agency with Houston or Cape Canaveral, it is in the US capital where "everything happens and where political decisions affecting space exploration programs are made," as this engineer summarizes during an interview in Madrid at the headquarters of this newspaper. During her last visit to Spain, she added to her long list of accolades the UUPRIZE25 Award from W Startup Community in the Innovative Space Leadership category, which she received at the Royal Academy of Engineering. "I am very proud to be Spanish and from Madrid. Spanish engineers are highly skilled and highly valued in the US," she asserts.
After two decades working at the California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the NASA center where robotic missions are designed and controlled, four years ago she was recruited to the Washington Headquarters of the space agency: "There, I am dedicated to managing the Mars Sample Return Program. I serve as the interface between NASA Headquarters and the projects I oversee that are part of our program. I am responsible for ensuring that they are executed according to agency requirements, that they have access to the necessary resources, and that they are prepared for the various stages of development and reviews," details this US government official, who is part of the NASA2040 leadership team, established to define the agency's strategy for that year.
The program to bring material from the red planet, she proudly states, is one of the most important in NASA's scientific division and will be carried out in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). "These samples would revolutionize our understanding of Mars and our solar system, and pave the way for human exploration of the red planet," Muñoz argues, as she pulls out a 3D plastic replica of a tube like the ones used by the rover Perseverance to store the rocks it selects in the Jezero crater. "The tubes we have sent to Mars are made of titanium. It is crucial that everything is well sealed to preserve the components and prevent contamination, as we must be able to distinguish what truly comes from Mars."
The tubes with the samples are placed in a container inside Perseverance awaiting the components of the Mars Sample Return mission to be launched in a few years to bring them back to Earth. The architecture of this program is complex. First, a NASA landing module called the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) would land near the rover. Inside that module, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) also travels.
Then, Perseverance will deposit the container with the selected samples into the Ascent Vehicle: "This vehicle will carry out the first liftoff from the red planet and transport the container to Martian orbit. The next mission will be the Earth Return Orbiter, from the ESA, which will capture the sample container, the size of a basketball, while orbiting Mars. Subsequently, that spacecraft will return to our planet, where it will release the entry capsule for the samples to end up in a specialized facility," explains the scientist.
In a tube like the one she carries in her bag, a very special rock sample found by Perseverance last year in an ancient riverbed in the Jezero crater is preserved on Mars. Its existence was announced amid great anticipation on September 10th last year, at a NASA press conference and in a scientific study in the journal Nature involving Spanish researchers.
In that sample, collected from a rock called Cheyava Falls and named Sapphire Canyon, they have found minerals and traces of chemical processes that could have developed in the presence of microbial life in the past. These potential biological signatures, according to Muñoz, could change the history of planetary science: "This is the most significant evidence we have found to date of possible ancient life on early Mars, but claims related to the possible discovery of past extraterrestrial life require an extraordinary amount of evidence," she cautiously states.
A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that could have a biological origin but requires more data or studies before reaching a conclusion about the absence or presence of life: "It could not be said lightly that there was a potential biological biosignature, and that is why it has been investigated for many months before announcing its discovery," says Muñoz. From her perspective, we are facing "an extraordinary discovery," but she points out that the minerals found in those rocks "can also be generated abiotically, that is, without the presence of life." "Although explanations for an abiotic process for what we see in those samples are less likely, given the findings of the article, we cannot rule them out."
NASA, she assures, has already conducted all the tests that can be done with the instruments carried by Perseverance. "The only way to know for sure if we are looking at signs of past life is to bring them to Earth for analysis with the instruments we have here. Furthermore, in 10 years, they will be even more sophisticated; look at how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are advancing. If we study them here, I believe it is very likely that we will obtain a definitive answer," says Muñoz, who was the lead AI researcher for the Curiosity rover over a decade ago. "At NASA, we have been using AI for a long time, before it became trendy," she points out.
Exactly this mission to bring samples from Mars appeared a few months ago on the list of programs that could be threatened by the significant and controversial budget cuts proposed by the Donald Trump Administration for NASA's scientific division. A budget cut that is up in the air - the final decision on the US budgets will be made by Congress - but has already sparked protests from the agency's scientists.
"What NASA is doing now is setting priorities, among which are manned missions to the Moon, as there is a desire to establish a continuous presence as preparation for future manned missions to Mars. And part of that roadmap to take humans to Mars requires the science we will obtain with Mars Sample Return. So what is being analyzed is if this mission can be carried out in a more cost-effective and timely manner, that is, how to bring the Mars samples back sooner and for less money," explains Muñoz.
Additionally, they are now competing with China, which has announced its intention to launch a spacecraft to Mars in 2028 to bring back samples: "The difference is that if they succeed, they will demonstrate that technological capability, but in our case, the samples have been scientifically selected, which potentially increases the chances of finding evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars," she argues.
For all these reasons, and although she is cautious about what will happen with the Mars Sample Return mission, this engineer is confident that it will become a reality: "It has taken us 30 years to get to this point thanks to the exploration carried out by the Martian rovers," she points out. She also believes that a lot of patience is needed when working on special programs, "because what you are doing now may be used in 10 or 20 years."
For Muñoz, bringing samples from Mars is very important for humanity, not only for the possibility of finding life outside of Earth, which is the great desire of science: "This rock is 3.5 billion years old, meaning it is younger than what was thought to be the age of samples where ancient life could be found. This means that it is likely that Mars was habitable for longer than we thought or later in the planet's history than we thought," she explains. And if we understand how long it was habitable, how it lost its magnetic field, and its atmosphere became thinner until it ran out of water, transitioning from a habitable planet to a completely hostile world, "we can better understand what could happen to Earth," she argues.
According to this NASA scientist, "whether we bring back those samples robotically or with astronauts, or we send more advanced equipment to Mars to analyze them, the knowledge gained could be completely revolutionary and rewrite planetary science." However, she emphasizes, "in the search for extraterrestrial life, we have to keep a very open mind, because it could be very different from what we know. And it may happen that we may not recognize it."
Looking back, she says that what she has done at NASA has exceeded all her expectations and considers that "it has been worth the effort to pursue the dream" she had since she was a child: "My mother used to say that I loved watching launches on TV when I was very young, and at three years old, she gave me a children's book about the Apollo program. I learned numbers in English with the countdown from the mission in the book," she recalls.
Her mother, Alicia, who was born in a town in Ciudad Real, has always supported her to achieve it: "She is very optimistic, she instilled in me to have an open mind and encouraged me to study languages." At 17, Muñoz went to complete her pre-university studies in Ohio: "I already knew that I wanted to work at NASA, and I was fortunate that my American host father during that year was a US Air Force veteran with family in Florida. We spent Christmas there, and I asked them to take me to Cape Canaveral. I was able to go again on another study trip, and when I returned to Madrid, I told my mother, 'Someday I will work at NASA.'"
She got to work and trained with that goal in mind: "NASA has a center in Robledo de Chavela (Madrid) - the Deep Space Communications Complex - so I thought that if I studied Telecommunications Engineering, maybe I could enter there. I enrolled at the University of Alcalá and graduated at the top of my class, which opened many doors for me. I applied for a scholarship at the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) in Torrejón, and then I studied Electronic Engineering at the Complutense University and a master's degree," she recounts. After finishing her final project, INTA hired her for the electronic design of the Osiris camera for the ESA's Rosetta mission, the first to extensively explore a comet.
"I liked electronics, but since I wanted to work at NASA, I went to the International Space University in Strasbourg with a scholarship from the ESA to pursue a master's degree in space studies. As part of that master's, I was able to research at NASA's JPL with a scholarship." At the same time, an American professor encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D. in the US, and she was admitted to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): "It was incredible to work with such brilliant yet humble people. You see a scientist in shorts and flip-flops, and you can't imagine they are a Nobel laureate, or you run into Stephen Hawking in the hallway."
Her time at Caltech was the gateway to JPL, where she started with the Deep Space 1 mission, followed by many others. "What I love about the US is that if you work hard, they value you and give you opportunities. I didn't know anyone, I was selected for a Ph.D. at Caltech and hired at JPL based on my resume, my merits, and because they saw my potential," says Muñoz, who is proud to have started her career with a mission to a comet (Rosetta) and ended up with missions to Mars. "They all try to answer the same question, which is whether we are alone in the universe or not."