NASA Postdoctoral Program - Solar System Exploration: Tidal Dynamics

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 conducting research on tidally driven processes operating on solar system bodies. Tides influence the orbital evolutions, thermal evolutions, rotation dynamics and surface geology on many bodies, especially icy satellites in the outer solar system. Two bodies of special interest are the icy satellites, Europa and Enceladus. On Enceladus, diurnal tidal shear stress may drive heating along fractures while tides may also open and close these cracks, allowing observed eruptions to occur. In the case of Europa, many fractures on its surface have been linked to diurnal tensile stress. Identification of tidally controlled geology also provides constraints on the internal structure of these bodies, specifically the likelihood of subsurface oceans.