Chris McKay likes to travel, preferably to exotic, faraway lands. Mars is the usual destination, but Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan are also on his itinerary.
McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, ventures to some of Earth’s most extreme environments to study the closest facsimiles he can find to Mars and other distant outposts, on a mission to learn how life might exist beyond our planet.