Dr. Nina Lanza is the Team Lead for the Moon to Mars Team in Space Science and Applications (ISR-1) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is the Principal Investigator of the ChemCam instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover and a Co-Investigator for the SuperCam instrument onboard the Mars 2020 rover. Her research focuses on understanding the origin and nature of manganese minerals on Mars and how they may serve as potential biosignatures. She is also studying rock coatings, which provide a record of rocks’ interaction with atmosphere, water, soil, and potentially life. Dr. Lanza has done geologic fieldwork across the word including the Miller Range, Antarctica; Devon and Axel Heiberg islands, Canadian Arctic; Rio Tinto, Spain; and the Atacama Desert, Chile. She was a field team member for the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) project in 2015–2016. She is a sought-after science communicator who has contributed to programming on The Science Channel, National Geographic, BBC, and Curiosity Stream.
Dr. Lanza was educated at Smith College (AB), Wesleyan University (MA), and the University of New Mexico (PhD). She is thrilled to be living her childhood dream of working on a spaceship.