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“It implies preparing the interviews, which involves some scientific reading, recording and editing the videos. “Making outreach videos takes A LOT of time,” he explains. The biggest learning experience for Marsset in starting the channel has been budgeting the time necessary to create the videos from start to finish. Marsset wants the interviews to be captivating and inspiring, and has the help of another friend, Sergio Valenzuela, a musician who created a music library just for the channel, to help set the tone. The process was fun and went so smoothly, Maurel confided, that she didn’t even experience any nerves about appearing on camera. “It was Michael's first interview, so we were testing a few things, but I can tell you that now he’s a real professional,” says Maurel.

She appears on the first episode of the channel, “Tiny Pieces of Sky”, to talk about her trip to the Atacama Desert in Chile to collect meteorite fragments.

She is currently doing research as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship in France, studying the magnetic properties of meteorites to better understand the building blocks of planets, called planetesimals. Maurel obtained her PhD in planetary sciences in 2021 from EAPS. One of Marsset’s colleagues and good friends, Clara Maurel, knew appearing on the channel made perfect sense. So, from the beginning I knew that I would make videos about the scientific projects conducted in Chile,” says Marsset, who moved there in November 2021.Ĭhile has long been a paradise for astronomy research: clear skies, ideal atmospheric conditions, and low light pollution are perfect for radio and optical telescopes, such as the ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. “When I launched my channel, I had just learned that I would soon relocate to Chile (South America), having obtained a fellowship to work as an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Paranal Observatory. The name of the channel, which translates to “Space and Chile”, is also a play on 'spicy chili', which gave Marsset a “good excuse for a silly logo.” But it also has the unifying theme of narrowing down such a broad topic to research projects being done in Chile.

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The series explores topics such as meteorites, exoplanets, and the human brain in zero gravity. The result is Space y Chile, a YouTube series inspired by Marsset’s time in the EAPS planetary spectroscopy group with Francesca DeMeo and Richard Binzel. Most of them turned out to be very enthusiastic about the idea, which further motivated me.” “I started contacting colleagues asking for interviews.

When he started to talk to those around him, it turned out they shared that interest too. “I wanted to share my passion for space sciences with people,” says Marsset. While working as a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science (EAPS), Michael Marsset had many interesting conversations with his fellow scientists about the universe Marsset then wondered if there was a way he could share those conversations with the public to enjoy as well. Former EAPS postdoc Michael Marsset launches a new YouTube channel, interviewing scientists working on space research in Chile, including recent EAPS alumna Clara Maurel.

Francesca demeo