Understanding radiation effects in dust and icy regolith on airless bodies

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 is with the Planetary Magnetospheres Lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and seeks a postdoctoral researcher to carry out experimental studies on a newly built ultra-high vacuum radiation simulation chamber in the SpaceREDI laboratory. The position focuses on using neutral and ion mass spectrometry combined with infra-red spectroscopy to understand the effects of ionizing radiation in icy regolith analogs representative of comets, polar cold traps at the Moon and Mercury, or icy moons. The research will investigate how radiation causes physical and chemical processes on airless bodies, including implantation of exogenous species, formation of new molecules through radiolysis, stimulated desorption of surface species, and molecular migration into the subsurface. A major focus will be the in situ production and characterization of high fidelity icy regolith analogs to understand radiation effects in mixed, granular materials representative of airless body regolith.