Still staring at the night sky

Stephen Kane’s life-long passion for space is helping unravel the mysteries of Venus.

As a young boy growing up in Tamworth, Stephen Kane was deeply inspired by the clear night skies and mesmerising stellar views that only those living in regional areas can fully appreciate.

A school excursion to the planetarium got him hooked on astronomy and planetary science, and he devoured as many books as he could find about space at the local library.

It was the mid-1980s, a particularly productive era of space exploration, during which we witnessed the first pictures from NASA’s Voyager 2 mission to the edge of our solar system.

“The Voyager 2 spacecraft passed Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, and I was completely engrossed in all of the pictures that were returned by that mission,” Stephen said.

“Suffice to say that studying astronomy and the planets, and the search for life in the universe, have been a life-long passion for me.”

That passion launched him from country New South Wales to the United States, where he now plays a leading role in NASA’s two historic missions to explore our closest planetary neighbour, Venus.

The DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions will help solve the puzzle of why our sibling planet turned out so differently from our own. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system with a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid that cause a runaway greenhouse effect.

So, why are we returning to Venus if we know that it’s a hostile and lifeless environment? Stephen likes to explain using the following analogy.

“Imagine that you live in a small town. It’s a beautiful place, you love living there, and the town is full of life. The nearest town is the same size and seems like it was once identical, but now it’s burned to the ground with no sign of life. It is a stark reminder of mortality,” he said.

“You ask others what happened to the other town? Nobody in your town knows. You ask how long ago it happened? Once again, no-one knows. You ask, if we don’t know when or how it happened, then could the same fate befall your town? Again, silence.

“I don’t know about you, but I would not feel comfortable until I knew exactly when, how, and why that nearby town was destroyed. Not just for morbid curiosity, but to fully understand what factors make a town prosperous, and what other factors may lead a town to utter ruination. “Venus is the key to understanding how planetary habitability works. If we can understand the secrets of planetary habitability for Venus, then we can improve sustainability of the Earth, and optimise the search for other far-away ‘towns’ that might be similar to our own.”

Stephen received a Bachelor of Science (Honours) and began looking for graduate programs specialising in planetary science, but there was very little research in that field in Australia.

The University of Tasmania was a partner with several other institutions that monitored stars to search for exoplanets, and so he took the opportunity to get into this new field and completed a PhD in Astrophysics in 2000.

Stephen currently holds the posts of Professor of Planetary Astrophysics at the University of California in Riverside, US; and Director of the Planetary Research Laboratory, a NASA-funded lab to study planetary habitability, exoplanets and solar system science.

Although a world away, both physically and metaphorically, from Tamworth, Stephen continues to draw inspiration from science and the mysteries of the night sky.

“To quote Douglas Adams, ‘The Universe’ is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore,” he said.

“Fortunately, I’m not particularly interested in a quiet life, and the unsettling nature of the universe just means there’s an infinite amount left to discover. I can’t wait for what’s next!”

Nicole Mayne

Stephen Kane in his office with a globe of Venus.