The fourth year astronomy graduate student was one of 18 people nationwide selected to participate in NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Planetary Science Summer School. The team spent their summer developing a concept for a solar-powered mission to study the evolution of Titan: a moon curiously similar to early Earth.

“It’s impossible to do an astronomy degree without NASA being in the background,” said Radzom, a member of Dr. Songhu Wang’s group at IU Bloomington. “At every family gathering, it’s: ‘So, are you going to work for NASA when you graduate?’ which is actually pretty uncommon.”

What followed was 10 weeks of remote team discussion sessions and webinars on science formulation, engineering, cost, management, and proposal strategy of a mission, all on top of his regular responsibilities as a graduate student. The team reviewed current priority questions in planetary science and decided to study Titan, a so-called “prebiotic chemistry factory” for its thick atmosphere, abundant hydrocarbons, and subsurface liquid water oceans that resemble early Earth.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft studied Saturn and Titan from 1997 to 2017, providing details of the moon’s structure. Radzom’s team proposed that their higher-precision instruments and solar-powered design could tackle unanswered questions about the moon’s curious environment and its potential to host life.

The team initially developed dozens of questions to explore about Titan, but quickly learned to switch from a mentality of unlimited scientific curiosity to one of resource-constrained mission design. “We had to whittle it down, week by week: which ones are the least risky, which ones are the most attainable?” said Radzom. 

For the 11th week of the program, the team met in-person at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and hit the ground running. “The first day of the [in-person] program we got an email back [...] that basically confirmed that our current instrument wasn’t going to work, so we needed a new one,” remembered Radzom.

Later that week, the cohort faced another scientific challenge. The mission design and navigation chair noticed that the purely polar orbit the team had proposed for the spacecraft wouldn’t allow them to get the data they needed. “I was pulled aside to work with them to find a compromise,” said Radzom, “basically, what’s the most off polar we could be and still achieve our objectives?” The team decided to offset their orbit by a few degrees, allowing them to adapt to the spacecraft’s constraints while still reaching the data requirements for the science.

Through each of these challenges, Radzom had the support of his teammates and of NASA’s space mission design experts, Team-X. Each participant was paired with one member from Team-X and worked with them for a total of nine hours to evaluate and finetune their part of the mission plan. 

Once the group had finalized their science, budget, and story, it was time to present. The team proposed their mission to a panel of scientists and engineers, including the Director of the New Frontiers program from NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. “They were very constructive in their feedback,” said Radzom, “it was a proper amount of grilling,” he laughed.

Whether Radzom will return to the world of mission design after completing his Ph.D. is to be determined, but one thing is for certain: when asked at the next family gathering, Radzom can respond that not only has he worked at NASA, but he’s also proposed a mission to them.