You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

For someone who studies outer space, Morgan Cable has been on some pretty cool work trips

right here on Earth.

The most unique place I've ever been was the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

It's called the Roof of Africa.

Its altitude is what, 58.95 meters, so it's about 20,000 feet.

You camped at the top for four nights and it was just so incredibly beautiful.

Morgan is a research scientist in Pasadena, California.

She's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and studies extreme environments.

Environments found in places like the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Up there, it's very barren.

There aren't even plants at the top.

There's some rock, there's some ice.

There are things that have been blown up from the serengeti down below and deposited over

time by the wind.

And Morgan hacks into that ice.

She wants to see what's inside of it.

We are looking for something called biosignatures or biomarkers and essentially that is stuff

that tells us that life is there or was there in the past.

There are things like pollen and stuff like that that's preserved and also bits of bacteria.

And things that we call bacterial spores, these are the toughest form of life we found

on Earth.

...