Dolon Bhattacharyya
Dr. Bhattacharyya’s primary interest is studying atmospheric escape from planets, specifically water and hydrogen by observing the Lyman-alpha emission from hydrogen and deuterium atoms present in the exospheres of planets. Her research has mostly been focused on studying water escape from Mars with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) far-ultraviolet observations and MAVEN-IUVS observations of the H and D Lyman alpha line at Mars. She is the developer of a radiative transfer model which converts the observed Lyman alpha intensities into density distribution maps of H and D atoms in the exospheres of Mars and the Earth. Dr. Bhattacharyya’s NASA mission experiences include being a science team member of the MAVEN-IUVS instrument and serving as Project Scientist for the CGO mission. She is also the PI and Co-I on several HST programs to study atmospheric escape from solar system objects, specifically Mars and Uranus. At present, she is also involved in projects that characterize atmospheric escape from Ultra-hot Jupiter type exoplanets as well as Earth-type rocky exoplanets.