NASA research space scientist Giada Arney hopes to rewrite textbooks through a look for life on exoplanets

A NASA research space scientist, who as a child became excited when she learned that Earth is a planet, is now looking for life on exoplanets.

Giada Arney, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center located in Greenbelt, Maryland, focuses on “astrobiology, exoplanets, organic hazes, Venus and planetary habitability,” according to her biography on the website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars, Arney said in a profile story about her for NASA People located on NASA’s website.

Arney, who began working at Goddard as a graduate student in 2015, spent three years working on the mission concept study of a 8-meter to 15-meter space telescope called Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), NASA reported. 

She has been working on the LUVOIR since she began as a postdoc and said she is most excited to look for other planets around stars. 

“Most compelling, it would be able to search for signs of life in the atmospheres of any potentially habitable worlds it finds," Arney told NASA. “As part of the LUVOIR project, I led a group called the Science Support Analysis Team, which developed simulation tools and other capabilities to show what science LUVOIR could do. My own research focus was aimed at simulating what LUVOIR might be able to see on potentially habitable exoplanets, including remotely observable signs of life called biosignatures.”

Arney has happy childhood memories of her mother showing her and her sister the constellations from their backyard, Arney told NASA. Her favorite library books were science books.

“I’m fairly sure I checked out every single science book in the children’s section, especially the space books. My favorite books went into vivid detail on the planets of our solar system,” Arney told NASA. 

Arney has a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology, according to her biography.