USC professor, Irmo resident helped build key device for the Mars Perseverance Rover

If the latest Mars rover accomplishes its goal of finding evidence of life on Mars, a Midlands resident and University of South Carolina professor will have been part of one of the biggest scientific discoveries in human history.

Stanley “Mike” Angel, 67, helped produce the SuperCam, which sits atop the mast of the Perseverance Rover and uses lasers to collect evidence of potential signs that life exists, or once existed, on Mars, Angel told The State.

“I’ve been working for like 30 years on this type of instrumentation and finally got it onto a mission,” said Angel, an Irmo resident who has been at USC since 1993. “Very early on in my career, I realized these remote chemistry measurements would be perfectly suited for applications like being used on spacecraft and rovers on planets like Mars.”

The technology was developed, in part, specifically for space, but also borrows methods honed exploring the depths of the ocean. It involves pointing a laser at a rock, soil sample, etc., and using a telescope to read data reflecting back from the laser, said Angel, a chemistry professor. Scientists can use that data to calculate what elements are in the sample, whether they contain molecules such as pigments or whether the sample contains organic compounds, which could provide clues as to whether Earth’s neighbor once supported life.

“This is bigger than just this mission,” Angel said. “Finding even a single cell that was there 2 billion years ago — think about how it would affect you. This is way beyond science.”

“This is the biggest question there is,” Angel said.

How does he feel about his life’s work currently collecting data on another planet? “You can’t even imagine,” Angel said. “It’s an amazing feeling.”

Scientists have long hypothesized that life once existed on Mars, given that the red planet once likely had oceans, rivers, lakes and more, Angel said. However, in the last few decades, experts have been discovering more “extremophiles,” organisms that thrive in temperatures, pressures, etc., that would kill most other life forms, Angel said. The discovery of more extremophiles has broadened the possibilities under which an alien life form could thrive.

“We found out that on the earth, anywhere there’s water — anywhere — it doesn’t matter what the conditions are, what the temperature is, whatever the pressure is, there’s life,” Angel said.

For example, tardigrades are microscopic animals that can survive both boiling water and sub-zero temperatures and can actually survive in the irradiated vacuum of space, according to National Geographic.

At Yellowstone National Park, there are organisms that thrive in water that is as corrosive as a car battery, according to the National Park Service.

“They’re just happy as can be living in those conditions,” Angel said of the Yellowstone extremophiles. And scientists continue to discover more organisms that can live in what was previously thought to be impossible conditions.

Just last week, scientists published the first-of-its-kind discovery of stationary marine life thousands of feet beneath a floating ice shelf and hundreds of miles from sunlight, according to Frontiers in Marine Science.

“Given that, let’s look at the conditions on Mars,” Angel said. “We know that Mars, a couple billion years ago, was like Earth. It had oceans, rivers and lakes. It had everything we would consider as conducive to having life.”

While not the primary goals of the Perseverance Rover, Angel said the mission will have other positive effects such as helping prevent America from falling behind in science, inspiring children to develop interest in space and producing new technologies for consumers.

“The technology that comes out of this, you can’t even begin to guess the impact these technologies will have, because every mission requires new technologies,” Angel said.