Sara Seager

Professor Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she holds appointments as a Professor of Physics, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science. She hails from Toronto, Canada. She earned her BSc from the University of Toronto and her PhD from Harvard University. Throughout her three-decade career, she has pioneered many research areas that now form the foundation of exoplanet atmosphere studies. Her groundbreaking research spans the foundation of exoplanet atmospheres, innovative theories about life on other worlds, laboratory work demonstrating the plausibility of life in non-water solvents, and the development of novel space mission concepts. In space missions for planetary discovery and exploration, she served as the Deputy Science Director of the MIT-led NASA Explorer-class mission TESS from 2016 to 2020 and as the Principal Investigator of the JPL-MIT CubeSat ASTERIA from 2008 to 2019. ASTERIA successfully operated on orbit from 2017 to 2019, demonstrating precision pointing 100 times better than any other satellite in its mass category in order to serve as a prototype for a potential constellation to search for ExoEarth transits around the brightest Sun-like stars. For ExoEarth mission concept studies, she has contributed to NASA-sponsored committees and Science and Technology Definition Teams for 25 years. In this capacity, she led the Starshade Probe Mission Studies, including the Rendezvous Mission—a space-based direct imaging exoplanet concept designed to find a true Earth analog orbiting a Sun-like star. Most recently, she founded and leads the Morning Star Missions to Venus, a series of increasingly complex private-public partnership missions aimed at searching for signs of life—or life itself—in situ within the Venus cloud layers. Professor Seager is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, an organization established to provide independent, objective advice to the United States on science and technology issues. Her research achievements have earned her numerous awards and honors, including the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, designation as a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society Gold Medal, and appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of Canada’s highest civilian honors. Asteroid 9729 Seager is named in her honor. She is also the author of The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir.