Elizabeth Landau | |
|---|---|
 Landau at the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program in 2017 | |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (BA) Columbia University (MA) |
| Employer | NASA |
| Known for | Science Communication |
| Website | lizlandau |
Elizabeth Rosa Landau is an American science writer and communicator. She is a Senior Communications Specialist at NASA Headquarters. [1] She was a Senior Storyteller at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory previously.
Landau grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. As a child, she watched Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos, which helped inspire her love of space. [2]
She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology at Princeton University (magna cum laude) in 2006. As a Princeton student, she completed study-abroad programs at University of Seville and Universidad de León. [3] During her junior year in Princeton, she was the editor-in-chief of Innovation, the university's student science magazine. [2] In the summer of 2004, she became a production intern at CNN en Español in New York. [3] She earned a master's in journalism from Columbia University, where she focused on politics. [4]
Landau began to write and produce for CNN's website in 2007 as a Master's Fellow, and returned full-time in 2008. [5] Here she co-founded the CNN science blog, Light Years. [6] She covered a variety of topics including Pi Day. [7] [8] [9] In 2012, Landau interviewed Scott Maxwell about the Curiosity rover at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [10]
In 2014, she became a media relations specialist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she led media strategy for Dawn (spacecraft), Voyager, Spitzer, NuSTAR, WISE, Planck and Hershel. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] She led NASA's effort to share the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system with the world on February 22, 2017. [17] [18] In January 2018, she was appointed a Senior Storyteller at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [2] In February 2020, she became a Senior Communications Specialist at NASA Headquarters. [1]
Landau has written for CNN, Marie Claire, New Scientist, Nautilus, Scientific American, Vice and The Wall Street Journal. [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]
Landau interviewed astronomer Virginia Trimble for Quanta Magazine in November 2019. [24]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in the City of Pasadena, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and administrated and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. As a part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach gas giants Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets. Voyager 2 was the third of five spacecraft to achieve Solar escape velocity, which allowed it to leave the Solar System.
The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, following IRAS (1983) and ISO (1995–1998). It was the first spacecraft to use an Earth-trailing orbit, later used by the Kepler planet-finder.
Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. In the fulfillment of that mission—the ninth in NASA's Discovery Program—Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. In 2017, NASA announced that the planned nine-year mission would be extended until the probe's hydrazine fuel supply was depleted. On November 1, 2018, NASA announced that Dawn had depleted its hydrazine, and the mission was ended. The derelict probe remains in a stable orbit around Ceres.
Peter Tsou has been employed as a principal science staff member at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology for the past 34 years. Tsou's research primarily centers around the utilization of aerogel in space exploration.
Claudia Joan Alexander was a Canadian-born American research scientist specializing in geophysics and planetary science. She worked for the United States Geological Survey and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was the last project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and until the time of her death had served as project manager and scientist of NASA's role in the European-led Rosetta mission to study Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
Stephen J. Edberg is a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is perhaps best known for creating collaborative efforts between amateur and professional astronomers. A professional astronomer since 1970, Edberg still considers himself to be an active amateur astronomer as well and is an active astronomical observer, photographer, and telescope maker. He presently serves as staff astronomer for the Solar System Exploration website posted by NASA Headquarters and staff scientist for Earth science communication and for Exoplanet Exploration communication.
Vyacheslav Gennadievich Turyshev is a Russian physicist now working in the US at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is known for his investigations of the Pioneer anomaly, affecting Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft, and for his attempt to recover early data of the Pioneer spacecraft to shed light on such a phenomenon.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Science Division investigates physical and chemical processes on the Earth, in the Solar System, and throughout the universe. Explorations of space and terrestrial processes lead to understanding of the universe. Methods for accomplishing scientific work pertaining to the nature of the Earth, the Solar System, the galaxy, etc., are addressed in the JPL Science Division. Techniques in both physical and life sciences are utilized.
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight was active on Mars for 1440 sols.
Scott Maxwell is an American engineer and a former Mars rover planning lead for Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Adriana C. Ocampo Uria is a Colombian planetary geologist and a Science Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. In 1970, Ocampo emigrated to California and completed her Master in Sciences at California State University, Northridge and finished her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands. During high school and graduate studies she worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she serves as the science coordinator for many planetary missions.
The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) is a ground-based near-infrared spectrographic system specifically designed to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. The NESSI instrument was mounted in 2014 on a 2.4 meter telescope at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in Socorro County, New Mexico, USA, achieving first light on 7 April 2014.
Lunar Flashlight is a low-cost CubeSat lunar orbiter mission to explore, locate, and estimate size and composition of water ice deposits on the Moon for future exploitation by robots or humans.
Susan G. Finley, a native Californian, has been an employee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since January 1958, making her the longest-serving woman in NASA. Two days before Explorer 1 was launched, Finley began her career with the laboratory as a human computer, calculating rocket launch trajectories by hand. She now serves as a subsystem engineer for NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). At JPL, she has participated in the exploration of the Moon, the Sun, all the planets, and other bodies in the Solar System.
Amanda R. Hendrix, Ph.D. is an American planetary scientist known for her pioneering studies of solar system bodies at ultraviolet wavelengths. She is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Her research interests include moon and asteroid surface composition, space weathering effects and radiation products. She is a co-investigator on the Cassini UVIS instrument, was a co-investigator on the Galileo UVS instrument, is a Participating Scientist on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LAMP instrument and is a Principal Investigator on Hubble Space Telescope observing programs. As of 2019, she is also the co-lead of the NASA Roadmaps to Oceans World Group.
TRAPPIST-1e, also designated as 2MASS J23062928-0502285 e, is a rocky, close-to-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone around the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, located 40.7 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. Astronomers used the transit method to find the exoplanet, a method that measures the dimming of a star when a planet crosses in front of it.
The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) is a space telescope and the fourth medium-class mission of the European Space Agency's Cosmic Vision programme. The mission is aimed at observing at least 1000 known exoplanets using the transit method, studying and characterising the planets' chemical composition and thermal structures. Compared to the James Webb Space Telescope, ARIEL will have more observing time available for planet characterisation but a much smaller telescope and it will be launched almost a decade later. ARIEL is expected to be launched in 2029 aboard an Arianespace Ariane 6 together with the Comet Interceptor.
Contribution to ARIEL Spectroscopy of Exoplanets (CASE) is a detector subsystem contribution to an infrared spectrometer instrument for the planned European ARIEL space telescope. It is being developed by NASA as a contribution to the European Space Agency (ESA) project to add scientific capabilities to the space telescope to observe the chemical composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets, as well exoplanetary metallicities. The ARIEL spacecraft with CASE on board is planned to launch in 2029.
Sarah Milkovich is lead of Science Operations for the Mars 2020 rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was investigation scientist for the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.