Elizabeth Tasker

Join Emily and Alexa as they speak with Dr. Elizabeth Tasker about her trajectory in science communication for international audiences. Dr. Tasker is an associate professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, where she also serves on the outreach team. She originally founded and continues to write on the Institute's blog, Cosmos, and supports the English translation of press releases and social media feeds. Dr. Tasker also does international outreach for several space missions, including Hayabusa2, and is the international outreach lead for the Martian Moons Exploration Mission, MMX. Her academic research looks at the formation of stars and planets using numerical simulations and machine learning, and also explores the use of virtual reality in creating unique online events. Dr. Tasker has also written her first popular science book, The Planet Factory, which you can check out now, and she is the lead editor and one of the authors on the textbook Planetary Diversity.

You'll be astounded when you listen to A/Prof Elizabeth Tasker as she takes us on an astonishingly brilliant 600million kilometre rollercoaster ride on the JAXA Hayabusa missions to collect the very first Asteroid samples and bring them back to earth for analysis, to reveal the primordial origins of our solar system. Elizabeth also gives us an update on JAXA's 2026 Mars Moons mission ~ MMX You'll marvel at this triumph of ingeniously designed and executed science and engineering! Great science stories of discovery are essentially ... great human stories.