Athena Custenis, her head among the planets

It’s not all about survival, you have to know where survival is possible. From this aphorism, some may be tempted to draw a guideline or even a philosophical principle. Specialist in “Habitat of Space Objects”, the astronomer Athena Costenis took a scientific approach. This CNRS Research Director at the Paris-PSL Observatory Meudon (Hautes-de-Seine), involved in numerous space missions, is an internationally recognized expert on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. In October 2024, he will become the first non-American to become president of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the world’s largest and most prestigious planetary association.

How do you prepare for a career as an astronomer in France when you were born into a military family in Greece? “Above all, by cultivating your imagination”, says one who devotes his free time to writing police investigations. At 15, the teenager visits the Athens Planetarium, never missing an episode of a television series. Star Trek and reads. Science fiction, pseudo-scientific essays, but also the popular works of exobiologist Carl Sagan, who would become a friend many years later.

That would be about as well “Learn how to take advantage of opportunities”. In Ankara, where her father, a former pilot in the Greek Air Force, is a diplomat, the young girl was parachuted into Class 1.^d In French high school, without knowing the language. After completing her graduation in 1980, she plans to study astronomy in Paris. Her parents accepted on the condition that the course be combined with another in English literature. The latter would take her to the Sorbonne Nouvelle to complete a thesis on fictional writers, which she would not complete…

Seasonal changes on Titan

It is true that the fantasy is already being discussed at the Meudon Observatory, where its master’s courses in astrophysics and space technologies take place. In 1987, Daniel Gauthier, director of the laboratory that would become LACIA (Laboratory for Instrumentation in Space Studies and Astrophysics), suggested that a student at Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University undertake a thesis on Titan. This satellite of Saturn is the only moon in the solar system that has a dense atmosphere. and was flown by the Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 probes only twice, in 1980 and 1981. “At that time three hundred infrared spectra were collected, which no one thought to analyze”

Athena mentions Costenis.

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