Samuel W. Courville

I conduct research with multiple NASA planetary science mission teams, e.g., Psyche, Europa Clipper, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I am also interested in developing new instrumentation for future geophysical investigations.

I study how the temperature and internal structures of asteroids, planetesimals, and dwarf planets have evolved over the history of the solar system. I relate evolution models to planetary geophysical data, e.g., radar sounding and magnetometry.

Through field work, I explore how extreme environments on Earth may be analogous to environments on other worlds. E.g., I research how microbes survive in Yellowstone hot springs.