Bonnie L. Cooper, Scientist
Planetary Geology and In-Situ Resource Utilization
ESCG Employee / Jacobs
bonnie.l.cooper@nasa.gov
Wk: 281-483-5438
Cell: 281-686-6821
Dr. Bonnie L. Cooper is a planetary geologist and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) specialist at Johnson Space Center (JSC). She is mainly interested in soil science and how planetary surface materials may be used to manufacture rocket fuel, oxygen, water, and other consumables in aid of Solar System exploration. She works closely with the RESOLVE (Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction) project, which seeks to deploy a robotic ISRU lander at the lunar south pole to determine the accessibility of frozen ice and the resource potential at various locations.
Another important area of research is toxicology studies, whose goal is to provide a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for dust when crew are deployed to the lunar surface. Dr. Cooper aided in the development of a new method of extracting respirable particles from lunar soil for use in toxicology experiments. The unique features of this method are that (1) the lunar material is never exposed to fluids other than pure gaseous nitrogen; and (2) none of the lunar material is lost--all of the material is retained within various components of the system and can be recovered for other research needs.
Ph.D. University of Texas at Dallas, 1992
B.S. University of Texas, 1981
Schrunk, D.G., Sharpe, B., Cooper, B. and Thangavelu, M. The Moon: resources, future development, and settlement. (Springer Verlag, 2008).
Cooper, B.L., McKay, D.S., Taylor, L.A., Kawamoto, H., Riofrio, L.M. and Gonzalez, C.P. Extracting Respirable Particles from Lunar Regolith for Toxicology Studies. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Engineering, Science, Construction, and Operations in Challenging Environments (Earth & Space 2010), 2010, 66-73.
Wallace, W.T., Taylor, L.A., Jeevarajan, A.S. and Cooper, B.L. Lunar Dust and Lunar Simulant Activation and Monitoring. Meteor. Planet. Sci., 2009, 44, 961-970.
Cooper, B., Salisbury, J., Killen, R. and Potter, A. Midinfrared spectral features of rocks and their powders. JGR-Planets, 2002, 107(E4), 5017.