Nicol lives in Holland. She conducts research and development to decide what experiments to send to space.
Growing Up
She studied environmental science at university, learning about renewable energy and climate change. She considered working in environmental law. However, she became interested in plant biology and looked into environmental stress. Nicol did her PhD on what happens to plants if there was a nuclear disaster. She went to Chernobyl and looked into how the plants were able to deal with this radiation and survive.
Becoming A Deep Space Exploration Scientist
Nicol is a biologist but experiments are in all areas of STEM. Her experiments include chemistry, physics and human experiments with the astronauts. For example, muscles and bones get weaker in space because of less gravity, so Nicol will look into exercises to help this.
Nicol used to work on experiments going to the international space station (ISS). Now as a deep space exploration scientist, Nicol works on things further out in space.
Nicol’s favourite planet is Neptune, she remembers in year 4 she had a lesson about the solar system and thought the image of Neptune was really beautiful. Nicol wanted to see it for real one day, although now isn’t sure that’s possible because it’s so far away.
Nicol’s Day To Day Job
Nicol works Monday-Friday 9-5 but sometimes projects mean working later when it’s getting closer to launching an experiment. She said she doesn’t mind that because she gets to travel to different laboratories around Europe (before COVID) and enjoys the beautiful settings where she works.
Never sent any experiments with animals to space but her experiments focus more on microorganisms like tardigrades. They’re able to resist extreme environments, if they can survive in space maybe they can tell us more about what is deeper in space.
Thank you to Nicol Caplin for joining us for Outbox 2021.
