NASA Postdoctoral Program - Habitable 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. The goal of the Habitable Worlds program is to use knowledge of the history of the Earth and the life upon it as a guide for determining the processes and conditions that create and maintain habitable environments (including transient environments) and to search for ancient and contemporary habitable environments and explore the possibility of extant life beyond the Earth. NASA's Habitable Worlds Program includes elements of the Astrobiology Program, the Mars Exploration Program, the Outer Planets Program, the Planetary Protection Research Program (all in the Planetary Science Division) and Living With a Star in Heliophysics. A common goal of these programs is to identify the characteristics and the distribution of potentially habitable environments in the Solar System and beyond. This research is conducted in the context of NASA's ongoing exploration of our stellar neighborhood and the identification of biosignatures for in situ and remote sensing applications. Applicants who apply for this research opportunity and are subsequently selected for an NPP award are expected to attend the Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon) and/or the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) using the travel funds that are conferred as part of the NPP award.