NASA Postdoctoral Program - Thermal Modeling for Complex Terrains on Europa

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 thermal modeling for Europa's complex terrains in support of the Europa Clipper mission. The research will involve improving numerical tools to calculate surface temperatures at Europa, incorporating roughness, beaming, self and projected shadows for regolith properties. The work will perform sensitivity analysis for self-warming between surface units under realistic observational conditions and compare it with heating resulting from geothermal contributions. The research will support the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS) science team in analyzing future observations at Europa and understanding detection limits for thermal anomalies that may indicate active or dormant heat sources.