NASA Postdoctoral Program - Planetary Science: Martian Geochemistry with Curiosity's SAM Instrument Suite

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 project will utilize mass spectrometric data from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on the Curiosity rover to better understand Gale crater geochemistry, particularly the deposition of salts and implications for aqueous alteration processes through time. Projects may use data acquired by the SAM mass spectrometer on Mars and/or by laboratory instruments processing terrestrial analog materials. Other laboratory analytical techniques that may be used include X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. Prior experience with martian in situ data analysis is highly desirable.