People: Astrobiology Faculty

Don Brownlee is a professor of astronomy with strong interests in the origin and evolution of the solar system and astrobiology. His specialty is laboratory analysis of primitive solar system materials from asteroids and comets. In his own lab, this work is mainly done with electron microscopes but he collaborates with other groups that use essentially all types analytical studies that can be done on microscopic samples. He pioneered the collection of extraterrestrial particles from the stratosphere and he has been involved in a wide range of cosmic dust collection experiments from space, the ocean floor and polar ice. He is the principal investigator of the NASA Stardust comet sample return mission. He coauthored (along with Peter Ward) the astrobiology books Rare Earth and Life and Death of Planet Earth. Together these books deal with Earth and its life from the perspectives of time and space, how our planet compares with other bodies in the Universe.