Scott Messenger, Planetary Scientist
Astrophysics and Planetary Science
NASA Employee / KR
scott.r.messenger@nasa.gov
281-244-2786
PhD Washington University, 1997
B.S. University of Washington, 1991
Scott is a Space Scientist whose expertise is in isotopic analyses of extraterrestrial materials by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). His research interests include the nature and origin of materials in the solar nebula and preserved interstellar matter and stardust from comets and meteorites. Scott works closely with Lindsay Keller, Simon Clemett, Ann Nguyen, and Keiko Nakamura-Messenger to coordinate isotopic studies with mineralogical studies by transmission electron microscopy and organic analyses by resonance ionization mass spectrometry and other spectroscopic techniques. He also took part in the analysis of cometary dust returned by the Stardust spacecraft in 2006.
Scott received a B.S. in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Washington (1991) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in Saint Louis (1997). His graduate work focused on isotopic analyses of molecular cloud materials and stardust extracted from meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. Scott was a National Research Council Fellow at the National Institute for Standards and Technology from 1997 - 1999, developing techniques for isotopic measurements by time-of-flight SIMS. He subsequently rejoined his graduate research group at Washington University where he worked with the first NanoSIMS ion microprobe. Scott joined NASA in 2003.
- Robert M Walker Laboratory for Space Science
- NanoSIMS laboratory