Seafaring in Space: A Personal Voyage to Enceladus
About this Event
The seminar, “Seafaring in Space: A Personal Voyage to Enceladus,” will be led by Dr. Chris Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.
Dr. Glein will discuss Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn, which was found to have a vast ocean under its icy crust. Enceladus' ocean contains organic molecules—key elements for life—and chemical energy that could power microbes. Through his talk, Glein will share the legacy of legendary missions like Voyager 2 and Cassini-Huygens. He will carry forward Carl Sagan’s spirit of discovery about what is not only an ocean world, but also a habitable one. Ultimately, Glein aims to renew hope as we choose to seek life within our solar system.
Dr. Glein is a planetary scientist whose research revolves around the “big three” icy ocean worlds: Enceladus, Europa, and Titan. He is an expert on these moons' geochemistry, developing novel analysis methods that enable inference on their environments' geochemical properties. He also explores governing processes using spacecraft data. Glein has over 19 years of experience in developing and applying chemical models to constrain the geochemistry of outer solar system bodies. His research also includes exoplanets—both those that could be habitable and those that further understanding of geochemistry as a universal phenomenon.
Glein was a member of the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) instrument team, and he is now a Co-Investigator on the Europa Clipper MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) team. He served on the most recent NAS Decadal Survey for Planetary Science and Astrobiology. He earned a B.S. from the University of Washington in 2006 and a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 2012.
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