Wired Science

Studying Volcanoes on Earth and Throughout Our Solar System

Some people take their time figuring out what they want to do with their lives.  Rosaly Lopes, on the other hand, was more directed than most of us.  As she recalled in a recent NASA webchat,  “I wanted to study astronomy since I was about 5 years old!”  

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1957, Lopes’ childhood fascination with the cosmos was fueled by media coverage of the Space Race during the 1960’s.   The beaches of Rio afforded few options for an aspiring stargazer, so she left Brazil to study astronomy at the University of London.  There, the budding researcher found the objects of her intellectual desire: volcanoes, and not just of the Earthly variety,  anywhere they happen to be.  For her doctoral thesis. Lopes compared the volcanic processes on Earth and Mars.  She received her Ph.D. in Planetary Science in 1986, and has been studying molten rock all over the solar system ever since.

Beginning her career as a Curator at the Science Museum in London and later at the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, Lopes has lectured extensively in England and Brazil.  Her desire to pursue deeper research in terrestrial and planetary volcanology led Lopes to Italy, where she mapped the hazardous regions surrounding Mount Vesuvius.  From there it was on to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she joined the Galileo Flight Project, an unmanned mission to the moons of Jupiter.  While observing Jupiter's moon Io as part of the Near Infra-red Mapping Spectrometer team (also at JPL), Lopes discovered an impressive 71 active volcanoes.

In 2005, she was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal for her enthusiastic commitment to communicating planetary science to the public.  Her two books, The Volcano Adventure Guide and Io After Galileo: A New View of Jupiter's Volcanic Moon are written to be accessible to a wide  audience. Lopes also participates extensively in outreach and educational activities for minority students.

Today, Lopes is the Principle Scientist on the Cassini RADAR team for which she plans the scientific observations of Saturn, its moons, and rings.  Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has captured her interest, as its volcanoes are the result of ice volcanism (cryovolcanism) and operate  altogether differently than their terrestrial counterparts.