Maria Banks

Maria Banks is a geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center where she studies geologic landforms on Earth and compares them to similar features on Mars, Mercury, and the Moon. She enjoys studying the processes that act on the surface, both in the past and ongoing, that form the features and landforms that we see today.  She earned a degree in geology and planetary science from the University of Arizona (Ph.D.). Maria then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum from 2009-2014, after which she worked at the Planetary Science Institute for three years, and then moved to NASA. Maria has conducted fieldwork in Alaska, Iceland, Hawaii, and the Northeast, Southwest, and Northwest United States. Growing up in upstate New York, Maria developed a passion for studying the glaciated landscapes of North America. This passion inspired the focus of her PhD dissertation on glacial landforms and processes on Earth and Mars. Maria continues to pursue this passion in her research and also worked on an ice core drilling expedition in Antarctica,  living and working on the West Antarctic ice sheet for 3 months. Maria additionally enjoys working with the science teams for NASA missions including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and MESSENGER Missions, as well as the Phoenix Mars and InSight Missions that landed on Mars. Maria was the Project Scientist for the NASA instruments onboard the Blue Ghost Mission 1 that landed successfully on the Moon in 2025, the Vehicle Camera Science Lead for the Artemis II mission returning astronauts to the Moon and is part of the team training the Artemis astronauts for the science investigations they will conduct on the Moon.

Beyond her passion for geology and planetary science, Maria is a professional harpist and has traveled around the world three times performing on musical tours and on cruise ships. During college she also explored her interests in marine biology, working at the Mystic Aquarium, the home to the largest outdoor beluga whale habitat in the US. In her spare time, Maria enjoys hiking and scuba diving.

Language spoken: English