Larry R. Nittler

Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Carnegie Institution of Washington
5241 Broad Branch Rd NW
Washington DC 20015
phone: (202) 478-8460
fax: (202) 478-8821
e-mail:lrn@dtm.ciw.edu

Welcome to Larry's page of earthly delights!

I am a staff scientist in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. My primary research interests are in the laboratory analysis and scientific implications of extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. I am very interested in presolar grains in meteorites and in the development of new techniques for isotopic analysis and mapping of small samples. I am actively involved in the analysis of cometary samples returned by NASA's STARDUST mission and solar wind samples returned by the GENESIS mission. I also work on X-ray and Gamma-ray spectrometers for planetary missions. I am currently a participating scientst on the MESSENGER mission, which will orbit the planet Mercury starting in 2011.

The Carnegie NanoSIMS 50L ion probe has been installed and is working well! Click here to see delivery photos.

STARDUST

NASA's Stardust mission returned samples of a comet to Earth in January 2006. I was a member of the Preliminary Examination Team that studied the samples for the first 7 months after return. The results of that Examination have been published in a special issue of Science magazine on December 15, 2006.

Science Stuff

Other Stuff