The Nature of Early Solar System and Presolar materials

The NASA Postdoctoral Program 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 mineralogical and petrographic studies of extraterrestrial materials at nanometer scales using primarily transmission electron microscopy techniques. Current research focuses on the studies of primitive early solar system materials preserved in meteorites and interplanetary dust particles, circumstellar and interstellar grains, and molecular cloud matter. These analyses are pursued in a coordinated fashion with other analytical instruments including isotopic and spectroscopic analysis techniques. The research is focused on gaining a better understanding of the conditions and processes that affected these primitive materials from their formation through their evolution.