Solar System Exploration: Exogenous Organics for the Origin and Early Evolution of Life

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 analyzing organic compounds from space that were delivered to Earth by comets, meteorites, and interplanetary dust particles. The research involves studying small organic molecules such as amino acids, hydroxy acids, amines, purines, pyrimidines, and pyridines using chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques. The work aims to understand the structural, enantiomeric, and stable isotopic distribution of these species across extraterrestrial materials. Researchers will collaborate on field work and laboratory experiments exploring the origin of these compounds under astrophysical conditions, including aqueous alteration, energetically processed ices, gas-grain reactions, and terrestrial analogs of Mars. The fellowship is located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.