There was no guarantee that Eric Herrera would discover anything notable while scouring the Arctic sampling water, rocks and anything else he could swab or draw up in a syringe while on an Explorers Club expedition in 2022.
“I got lucky,” he said.
A test tube of an ambiguous substance collected at the magnetic North Pole contained a bacterium that’s since become the catalyst for MaverickX, the company he co-founded with Jesse Evans. Using the specimen, the San Antonio duo has found a faster, safer and more sustainable method for mining critical metals and extracting oil and gas…