Roy Price is an Assistant Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University. In his recent paper, “Quantifying the bioavailable energy in an ancient hydrothermal vent on Mars and a modern Earth-based analogue”, Roy and colleagues explored shallow hydrothermal vents in Iceland to imagine what types of microbes might have lived in similar environments on past Mars.

This week we had an inspiring conversation with Anurup Mohanty, who is Research Project Staff at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In addition to his research, Anurup is also a Visiting Scholar at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, where he channels his passion for science communication. In this Q&A, Anurup shares his journey as a budding astrobiologist and discusses his recent perspectives article, “Toward sustainable space exploration: a roadmap for harnessing the power of microorganisms.”

We had the pleasure of interviewing Maryse Napoleoni, a 3rd year PhD student in the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing group at Freie Universität Berlin. For her recent paper, “Mass Spectrometric Fingerprints of Organic Compounds in NaCl-Rich Ice Grains from Europa and Enceladus”, Maryse used special instruments on Earth to simulate what similar devices on space missions might see in plume material from icy moons.

In our inaugural Q&A for Astrobiology Revealed, we talk with astrobiologist Armando Azua-Bustos about his recent paper “Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta unveil Mars life detection limits”. Armando discusses growing up in the Atacama Desert, why he thinks it's harboring 100 million-year-old DNA, and how we should (or shouldn’t!) be searching for life on Mars.