ICAR - ABOVE & BELOW: AstroBiOlogical inVEstigation of Biosignatures Emblematic of Life on Ocean Worlds

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 opportunity focuses on Ocean World exploration through the ABOVE&BELOW initiative. The research seeks to address the central question: What is the biosignature preservation potential of Ocean World ices exposed to space-like combinations of temperature, pressure, and radiation? The team includes engineers, geoscientists, astrobiologists, microbiologists, synthetic biologists, and astrochemists working on experiments to understand biosignature preservation in extreme conditions. Researchers will modify an existing facility (Europa Tower, Stone Aerospace) to provide cryogenic temperatures (80 K), hard vacuum (1E-8 Torr), a large ice column, and sources of ionizing and UV radiation. The platform allows two classes of tests: simulating accreted sub-surface ices transported to the near subsurface, and flash freezing of ices by depositing microdroplets into vacuum to simulate geyser-derived materials. This research capability and suite of proposed experiments with microbes, informational molecules, and organics will provide data to test hypotheses related to the differential role that ice impurities may play in cryopreservation and radiation damage, highly relevant to current and future space missions directed at astrobiological targets on Ocean Worlds.