FELDSPAR

FELDSPAR, or Field Exploration and Life Detection Sampling for Planetary and Astrobiology Research, was a project that grew out of an astrobiology Summer School led by Wolf Geppert and David Cullen.  A group of international early career researchers – primarily graduate students and postdocs – fell in love with an Icelandic volcano at this summer school, and with Dr. Geppert and Dr. Cullen found ways to go back there and do good science.  With a new eruption and recent NASA funding via the PSTAR program, we have been able to collect and store sediment samples from 2015 to 2019. While all the previous graduate students who started this project have moved on, the samples are undergoing continued analysis by newer graduate students who hope to continue to do good science with the hundreds of samples that have been collected.