NASA Postdoctoral Program - Miniaturized instruments enabled by nanomaterials for future space missions

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 the development of nanomaterial-based instruments for next generation space missions. Nanomaterials offer a unique set of characteristics that can be leveraged to make miniaturized, low power, radiation hard, lightweight instruments. Current efforts include the development of a multifunctional sensor platform by printing nanomaterials such as graphene, carbon nanotube, molybdenum disulfide and other transition metal dichalcogenides using additive manufacturing techniques. The work also involves developing a miniaturized multispectral imager with quantum dot pixels used as a filter array. These instruments have a wide range of applications in planetary science, earth science and heliophysics. The research will be conducted at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.