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It seemed to be just a normal morning, when I pulled into the parking lot. The excitement around the artwork that we hosted on OU campus for the weekend hadn't yet started. But there was a fire truck, and I couldn’t make out which building had been evacuated, and what was blocked and what wasn’t. So, I decided to walk over to the Berrill building to see the Mars installation by Luke Jerram (About – Mars) for the first time. Barriers were still up from the night, but there it was, orange in the bright morning sunshine! 

Take a deep breath, and while you exhale slowly, think about what has just happened: you have inhaled a few litres of Earth’s atmosphere, we call it air. Could you have taken that same breath on Mars?

So, how does one embark on the journey to be part of this kind of extraordinary experience? For me, it all started in a rather unexpected place: a science fiction movie. Life—a film about astronauts encountering a rapidly evolving alien organism on Mars. Despite the movie's terrifying premise, I was utterly fascinated by how such microscopic organisms could adapt to extreme environments in quick succession.