Our guest for this episode is Dr. Jen Blank, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center and a Research Scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. Jen has been a member of the Mars Curiosity science team and studies Mars analog environments on Earth, focusing on the potential of water-rock interactions to support microbial life. Dr. Blank is also the Principle Investigator of BRAILLE (Biologic and Resource Analog Investigations in Low Light Environments), a NASA PSTAR project to characterize life in lava tubes and use robots to look for signs of life there, on Earth, Mars, and other worlds.

Check out our website for the full transcript of this podcast, plus the full YouTube version of this episode: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/episodes/47/