SINGAPORE – When Dr Melissa Yang Martin first stepped into a remodelled aircraft designed for scientific missions in 2006, she felt as if she had been transported into a science-fiction film.
“It reminded me of stepping onto the Starship Enterprise with the cables, computer screens, blinking lights and researchers stationed at their instruments, each one monitoring something different,” said the Singaporean, referring to the fictional starship made famous in the Star Trek franchise.
That moment, which happened when she was just 25 years old, would eventually set her apart as one of the few Singaporeans to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), one of the world’s leading space agencies, in a field dominated by major powers such as the US and China.
Singapore’s own space industry is still in a nascent stage. It now comprises about 70 companies and 2,000 professionals, with momentum building ahead of the launch of a National Space Agency on April 1.
Dr Yang Martin’s unexpected entry into the field began far from home, on board a research flight on an aircraft unlike anything she had seen before.
Then a graduate student in atmospheric chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, she had been on track for pre-medicine or veterinary science. But an opportunity came when her PhD adviser, Dr Donald Blake, who was funded by NASA to participate in airborne field campaigns that measured gases in the atmosphere, got her involved as part of his team.
Before she knew it, she found herself part of a NASA-led field mission called Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment – Phase B, where the goal was to study how pollution travels from Asia across the Pacific, and how it affects air quality in North America.
Dr Yang Martin recalled the aircraft she stepped into in 2006. Once a commercial Douglas DC-8 jetliner, it had been modified by NASA in the 1980s into a flying laboratory for studying Earth’s surface and atmosphere.
Instead of passengers, the cabin was packed with instrument racks. Metal plates lined the windows, fitted with probes, while openings in the top and bottom of the aircraft allowed sensors to peer down at Earth or up into the stratosphere.
As scientists tracked real-time streams of gases – including ozone, nitrogen dioxide and hydrocarbons – Dr Yang Martin watched a picture of the atmosphere take shape, one impossible to capture from the ground.
“The team is in constant discussion about what we’re seeing and whether we need to adjust the flight path to chase an evolving feature or capture a phenomenon unfolding around us.
“It’s a dynamic, fast-paced and incredibly stimulating environment,” she said.
The mission changed the trajectory of her career.
