Building Habitable Worlds

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The solar system formed from the collapse of a molecular cloud of gas and dust ~4.6 billion years ago. But how did that gas and dust coalesce into the Sun and eight planets that we see today? What processes and events led to the formation of habitable planets like the Earth? And how do the conditions at the birth of our solar system compare to what we see in other solar systems? I will answer these questions by studying meteorites and returned extra-terrestrial samples, rocky time capsules that can be used to probe the earliest stages of solar system formation and the evolution of planets.Some meteorites come from asteroids that have remained dormant throughout their history and preserve the very dust that was once swirling around the newly forming Sun. I will investigate the minerals found within the most pristine meteorites using cutting-edge analytical techniques. I will observe the relationship between minerals and organic matter, examine the first stages of accretion, and explore how these minerals relate to dust seen in interstellar space and protoplanetary disks around young stars.In the last decade new computer models and the discovery of exoplanets have shown that solar systems are dramatically shaped by giant planet migration. The inward and outward movement of Jupiter and Saturn caused turbulence and widespread mixing of materials from the inner and outer regions of the solar system. By identifying evidence of this transport and mixing in the meteorite record, I will understand the dynamic history of the solar system, and learn about the diversity of materials in the protoplanetary disk and the precursors to the Earth.Water may have been delivered to habitable planets by asteroids. Two space missions, JAXA's Hayabusa2 and NASA's OSIRIS-REx, aim to collect samples from the surfaces of the water-rich asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, respectively. I will study the mineralogy and composition of hydrated meteorites and samples returned from asteroids in order to understand the aqueous and thermal history of primitive water-rich bodies, and constrain the nature and distribution of volatiles and organics in the early solar system.