NASA Postdoctoral Program: Solar System Exploration: Planetary Physics, Comets, and Solar Wind

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 research including ongoing studies of Io and Io Torus, particularly time-variable phenomena, and aurorae on gas giants. Searches are underway for planetary bodies in the orbit of Pluto. Cometary research emphasizes the interaction of bright comets with the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field, interpreting ion structures in the comet seen in wide-angle images of the tail, and narrow-field images of the ion coma and spectra. Research also investigates what solar-wind/IMF conditions initiate the formation of transient structures in cometary tails, where in the comet the seat of the initial disturbance resides, and what specific instability mechanism is involved. Structures important to probe include disconnection events, folding ion tail rays, and propagating helical waves.