Ylva Strand

Ylva Strand is the guild's leading ice-core specialist and the first Ferrovane prospector to recover intact brine from beneath Europa's surface. Using the Cryo Ice-Core Sampler, she has drilled to 850 metres in the Conamara Chaos, returning cores that assay 210 g/t lithium alongside traces of helium-3.

Strand works in close partnership with the Europa Subsurface Assay Institute and spends most of each year on the ice in a pressurised sled camp. She is fanatical about the cold chain: every core is sealed at minus 180 degrees Celsius and stays that way until it reaches the laboratory. She contributed the cryo-core photograph series to the Jovian Volatiles Census and teaches sample-handling courses for new outer-moons crews.