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Dr Zoe Emerland

Profile summary

  • Academic Related Staff
  • Project Officer HVI Lab
  • Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
  • STEM Professional Services
  • Laboratory Support
  • zoe.emerland

Professional biography

I am the HyperVelocity Impact & Space and Planetary Environments Laboratories Supervisor, I focus on the day-to-day running of instruments such as the All-Axis Two-stage Light Gas Gun and the Space and Environment Simulation Chambers. Please contact me if you are interested in using any instruments in the lab for an upcoming project.

Career

2023-Present -  Project Officer - Hypervelocity Impact Laboratory - All-Axis Two-stage Light Gas Gun

2022-2023 - Research Assistant - Hypervelocity Impact Laboratory - All-Axis Two-stage Light Gas Gun

2018-2023 - PhD at the Open University - "An experimental and numerical assessment of ejected martian biosignatures impacting Phobos"

2015-2018 - BSc(Hons) Geology with Planetary Science at the University of Manchester

2013-2015 - A-levels at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge (Geology, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry)

Research interests

PhD at the Open University - "An experimental and numerical assessment of ejected martian biosignatures impacting Phobos"

This thesis investigates the delivery of possible martian biosignatures to Phobos and their subsequent detection within the Phobos regolith. iSALE-2D hydrocode was used to investigate the conditions experienced by Mars-like projectiles impacting Phobos-like targets, that were then compared with a survival criteria of shock pressure and temperature for amino acids. The resultant amino acid survivability varied broadly. To validate the numerical simulations, hypervelocity impact experiments were conducted, whereby bespoke Mars-relevant basaltic projectiles doped with the potential organic biosignature glycine, were fired using the All-Axis Light Gas Gun (AALGG) into two Phobos regolith simulants at a range of velocities. The bespoke projectiles fragmented upon acceleration resulting in buckshot cluster impacts where the proportion of glycine that survived impacts at similar velocities varied broadly, regardless of Phobos simulant used. This presented a fundamentally different impact process than would be experienced on Phobos. Therefore, to validate the numerical simulations with an alternative approach, the impact experiment results were compared to numerical simulations on the spatial scale of the AALGG experiments, that focussed on cluster impacts. These simulations revealed that amino acid survival and detection could be significantly affected by how early within a cluster a projectile fragment impacts. Nevertheless, the small-scale numerical simulations aligned well with the impact experiments suggesting it is an adequate tool for estimating the temperatures and pressures in real impactors. Finally, comparing the results from the large-scale numerical simulations with the impact experiments it was revealed that the datasets could be fit by logistic function sigmoid curves with impact velocity.
 

I work closely with the AstrobiologyOU research group - https://twitter.com/Astrobiology_OU

 

Publications

The Open University Hypervelocity Impact Laboratory: An All-Axis Aeroballistic Range Facility (2023)
Emerland, Zoe; Sylvest, Matthew and Patel, Manish
In : 72nd Aeroballistic Range Association Meeting (10-15 Sep 2023, Tokyo, Japan)

Modelling ejected martian biomarkers impacting Phobos (2021)
Morland, Zoe; Halim, Samuel; Pearson, Victoria; Patel, Manish; Green, Simon and Ramkissoon, Nisha
In : 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (15-19 Mar 2020 (Virtual), Houston, USA)

Characterising the Transfer of Biomarkers within the Phobos-Mars System (2020-03)
Morland, Z. S.; Pearson, V. K.; Patel, M. R.; Green, S. F.; Ramkissoon, N. K. and Spencer-Jones, C. L.
In : 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (16-20 Mar 2020 (Cancelled), Houston, USA)

Modelling the survival of ejected martian biomarkers impacting Phobos (2020)
Morland, Zoe; Halim, Samuel; Pearson, Victoria; Patel, Manish; Green, Simon and Ramkissoon, Nisha
In : Europlanet Science Congress 2020 (21 Sep - 9 Oct 2020, Virtual)

Metal Impactor Fragment found in Lunar Regolith Breccia Meteorite North West Africa 10989 (2019-05)
Morland, Zoe; Joy, Katherine; Gholinia, A and Degli Alessandrini, Giulia
In : 7th European Lunar Symposium (21-23 May 2019, Manchester, UK)

Chemical and Textural characterisation of two Phobos regolith simulants (2019-03-21)
Morland, Zoe; Pearson, Victoria; Patel, Manish and Green, Simon
In : Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (18-22 Mar 2019, Houston, USA)

Metal in lunar meteorite North West Africa 10989 Insight into survivability of impactor material delivered to the Moon (2019-03)
Morland, Zoe; Joy, Katherine; Gholinia, A and Degli Alessandrini, Giulia
In : Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (18-22 Mar 2019, Houston, USA)

Transfer of Biomarkers in the Phobos-Mars System: Hyper-Velocity Impact Investigations using a Light Gas Gun (2019)
Morland, Z.S.; Pearson, V.K.; Patel, M.R.; Green, S.F. and Ramkissoon, N.K.
In : 2nd British Planetary Science Conference (13-15 Jan 2020, Oxford, UK)

Impactor material in new lunar meteorite NWA 10989 (2018-09)
Morland, Zoe and Joy, Katherine
In : European Planetary Science Congress 2018 (16-21 Sep 2018, Berlin, Germany)

Lunar Fragmental Breccia NWA 10989: Implications for the Evolution of the Lunar Crust (2017-12)
Morland, Z. S. and Joy, K. H.
In : UKPF 15th Early Career Planetary Scientists' Meeting (6 Dec 2017, Glasgow, UK)

Cooling rates and vesiculation of shock melt pockets in shergottites (2017-12)
Morland, Z. and Krzesińska, A. M.
In : 1st British Planetary Science Congress (03-05 Dec 2017, Glasgow, UK) (p 56)

An Experimental and Numerical Assessment of Ejected Martian Biosignatures Impacting Phobos (2023-12-14)
Emerland, Zoe Sara
PhD thesis The Open University

Mars' moon Phobos: A better place to search for Martian life than Mars itself? (2020)
Moreland, Zoe
Postgraduate Research Poster Competition, The Open University

PoPSAT (Polar Precipitation SATellite) (2016)
Morland, Zoe; Bentel, Katrin; Binder, Matthias; Birkeland, Even; Guilloteau, Clement; Kalinauskaite, Eimante; Kiefer, Joshua; Lopez, Ana Lola; Mione, Michele; Palla, Marco; Roth, Georg; Strobl, Robert; Tanis, Cemal; Tomici, Maja and Pellet, Victor
Summer School Alpbach