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This week we are airing Fraser’s pre-recorded interview with Dr. Amanda Hendrix, Senior Scientist at PSI. Amanda studies solar system bodies in ultraviolet wavelengths and is the Director/PI of the NASA Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX) team, a branch of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI).
Amanda has 20+ years of experience in planetary science research. She earned a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder. As a graduate student and post-doctoral research at LASP/Univ. Colorado, Amanda gained valuable experience in UV spectroscopy and instrumentation, and began a career of investigating solar system surfaces (largely airless bodies) in the UV.
After LASP, she spent 12 years at JPL, progressing from a science planner on Cassini to Deputy Project Scientist, before moving to PSI in 2012. She is a co-investigator on the Cassini UVIS instrument as well as on the LRO LAMP instrument.
Amanda has led observing and research teams and published results in numerous NASA R&A and HST programs. She is also a co-author of Beyond Earth: Our Path to a new Home in the Planets, published by Penguin/Random house in Nov 2016.
Besides research, she enjoys teaching and sharing her love of planetary science with students and the public.
You can stay up to date with Amanda’s research by visiting her PSI webpage and following her on Facebook and Twitter.
Complete information about TREX is available by visiting the TREX website. You can also follow the team on Twitter.
This Week’s Journalists and Their Stories
- Dave Dickinson: NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight | Comet C/2020 R4 ATLAS Passes Earth This Week;
- Dr. Kimberly Cartier: An Exoplanet Where an Exoplanet Shouldn’t Be;
- Dr. Moiya McTier: Scientists Baked Meteorites in an Oven to Investigate the Atmospheres of Alien Planets.
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