'Quietest Town in America' Proves Ideal Location for Research

Photo by Rachel Slank

Rachel Slank with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope.

Space and planetary sciences doctoral student Rachel Slank has dreamed of being an astronaut since she was four-years-old. Though she's not in space yet, she's conducting research in a place that seems just as foreign.

Slank is completing a four-month internship at the Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The Observatory is home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. Because of the telescope's sensitivity, many everyday electronic services are banned.

In Green Bank, which is often dubbed "The Quietest Town in America," there are no cell phone towers, no wireless internet connections and no Bluetooth devices. There are no radio stations and very few televisions or microwaves. Residents who have microwaves must place them in faraday cages, to block electromagnetic fields. Even garage door openers are prohibited. Signals from any of these devices would interfere with the telescope's work.

The lack of modern technology may seem isolating, but it makes Green Bank an ideal, distraction-free environment for conducting research. Slank, a Distinguished Doctoral Fellow, is at the Observatory to help develop a computer model to measure water vapor on Mars and how the water vapor makes its way to the ice table below the surface. She is hoping to determine how much water from the atmosphere builds the ice table and ice lens below and how that causes frost heave on the surface. The internship research ties closely to her dissertation research, which is centered on understanding how liquids form on Mars and how water vapor interacts with soil on the red planet.

Findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest there is liquid water on Mars, and water ice was discovered by the Phoenix Rover. Slank was able to create water as it may be found on Mars in the University of Arkansas Ares Mars simulation chamber. She recently presented her findings at the Mars Workshop on Amazonian and Present-Day Climate in Lakewood, Colorado.

"I was able to create water out of dirt and salt in Martian conditions," Slank said. "I'm conducting more experiments to learn more about the limits to which this liquid formation is possible, because it has important implications for liquid stability and habitability at equatorial regions, future missions to Mars and the continuing search for liquid water."

The opportunity for experimentation is one of the leading reason Slank chose to pursue her doctorate at the University of Arkansas.

"The University of Arkansas space and planetary science program is one of the top experimental programs in the country," she said. "I want to do space research for the rest of my life, and I have a great set up here, so I'll be prepared to do that."

Slank holds a bachelor's degree in geology and earth science from the University of Arkansas and a master's degree in geology from the University of Texas at El Paso. She will conclude her internship at the Green Bank Observatory in September and is on track to complete her doctoral degree in spring 2020. She is advised by Vincent Chevrier, an assistant research professor for the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.