Moroccan Scientist Asmaa Boujibar Secures $300,000 NASA Grant to Probe Elemental Composition of Mercury

Moroccan-born Asmaa Boujibar, an Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences at Western Washington University (WWU), has been awarded a new two-year, $300,000 grant from NASA to investigate the elemental constituents of the planet Mercury. In her laboratory, Boujibar, along with her team of graduate students and undergraduate researchers, will analyze data gathered by NASA's Messenger probe, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.

The announcement of this prestigious grant was made by the university, located in the city of Bellingham in the northwestern United States, through a recent press release on its portal.

According to WWU, Asmaa Boujibar is capable of replicating in her laboratory the same chemistry, pressures, and temperatures found on Mercury. "Our high-pressure, high-temperature laboratory allows us to simulate the interiors of planets, including Earth. Essentially, we combine surface data with experimental findings to deduce the planet's interior characteristics and construct a comprehensive understanding of its composition," explained the researcher.

Boujibar and her team of graduate students and undergraduate researchers will utilize the data, maps, and information obtained from NASA's Messenger probe, which circled Mercury from 2011 to 2015, to glean insights into the planet's geological past, present, and future. "We know much more about Mars than any other planet beyond Earth, thanks to the data collected by rovers and Martian meteorites that have fallen to Earth. However, for Mercury, we must rely on laboratory simulations and remote sensing. The work we conduct in my laboratory is solely based on remote sensing data, the majority of which comes from the Messenger spacecraft," she added.

Studying Mercury with Artificial Intelligence

According to the American university, this NASA grant will enable students to tackle the complex patterns observed on Mercury's surface by employing artificial intelligence. "Messenger's data has revealed intriguing correlations between various aspects of the planet's physics and chemistry, such as topography, chemical composition, age, magnetic field, and gravity. Now, with machine learning, we can process this vast dataset and uncover hidden patterns using traditional mathematical techniques," elaborated the institution.

For Asmaa Boujibar, this research project comes at an opportune time, coinciding with the launch of the BepiColombo spacecraft, a joint venture between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which will begin orbiting Mercury in December 2025. "Our findings will provide new hypotheses to be tested with the data collected by this mission," she emphasized.

Having joined WWU in 2022, Asmaa Boujibar grew up in Casablanca and describes herself as a true enthusiast of space research. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Clermont Auvergne in France in 2014, where she worked at the Magmas and Volcanoes Laboratory.

At the age of 27, she was admitted to a team of NASA researchers in the same year while pursuing her doctorate, thus becoming the first Moroccan woman to work for the renowned American aerospace agency. Following her Ph.D., she held a postdoctoral position at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, from 2014 to 2016.