Sara Seager
Sara Seager
astrophysicist + planetary scientist at MIT
Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential in Space” in 2012
Searching for Another Earth…
Sara's main research goal is to analyze exoplanets to find and identify another Earth. This includes the search for signs of life by way of biosignature gases.
Her research has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanet characterization, including work that
led to the first detection of an
exoplanet atmosphere.
Missions Accomplished…
Sara has spent four years on the senior research staff at the Carnegie Institution of Washington preceded by three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. She received her PhD is from Harvard University.
Sara was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, 2013
MacArthur Fellow, 2012 recipient of the
Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, and the 2007 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner Prize.
In her own words...
"Being a scientist is like being an explorer. You have this immense curiosity, this stubbornness, this resolute will that you will go
forward no matter what people say."
Sara's Launch Missions...
Sara is a co-investigator on the MIT-led TESS
which is a NASA Explorer Mission to be launched in 2017.
She also chaired the NASA Science and Technology Definition Team for a “Probe-class” Starshade and telescope system for direct imaging discovery and characterization of Earth analogs.