Coordinated Organic Geo- and Cosmochemical studies of Planetary Materials

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific research opportunity focuses on the relationships between organic materials and their mineralogical hosts; bridging the gap between observed organics and the processes that affected them. The relationship between organic molecules and mineral hosts informs the formation and evolution of amino acids and peptides on asteroidal, cometary, and planetary bodies, as well as the emergence of homochirality on Earth. Coordinated analyses are performed on extraterrestrial samples, terrestrial analogs, and experimental products using the wide array of instrumentation available in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division at JSC, including liquid and gas chromatography mass spectrometers, scanning electron microscopes, and transmission electron microscopes. By exploring the relationship between organic components of astromaterials and their mineralogical hosts and environments, the research aims to place more robust constraints on the histories of samples.