May 2025 MSBR Luncheon

Dr. Elena Adams currently serves as Dragonfly Lander Systems Engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. She previously served as the Dragonfly Deputy Mission Systems Engineer, as well as the Mission Systems Engineer for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)—the first mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by impacting a spacecraft into a moonlet. Before joining APL in 2008, she was a planetary scientist working on missions to Jupiter and Saturn. As a systems engineer, she has contributed to missions for NASA and ESA involving Mars, Europa, the Sun, and Earth’s Van Allen Belts, as well as studies for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and NOAA. Adams has also received multiple NASA grants for developing space exploration technologies, including a hopping asteroid lander and a water sampling system for Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Dr. Melissa Trainer is Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and leads the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which will analyze Titan’s surface composition and potential prebiotic chemistry. She also serves as Deputy Lead and Co-Investigator for the Venus Mass Spectrometer on the DAVINCI mission to Venus. Since 2009, Dr. Trainer has been a Research Space Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, with research interests including the composition of planetary atmospheres and the production of organic molecules and aerosols via atmospheric synthesis. She is a science team member on the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument aboard the Curiosity rover, contributing to studies of the Martian atmosphere. An active member of the NASA Astrobiology community, Dr. Trainer also mentors students and postdoctoral fellows and engages in public outreach and education initiatives.