NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

It was renamed NExScI in the Fall of 2008 to reflect NASA's growing interest in the search for planets outside of the Solar System, also known as exoplanets.

NExScI is the science, operations, and analysis service organization for the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the scientists and engineers that use them.

Applications to the Sagan Postdoctoral Program are accepted in the Fall of each year with typically 5-7 offers made by the following February.

Summer Workshops are also part of the Sagan Exoplanet Program and offer a chance to graduate students and postdocs to explore an exoplanet-related topic in depth.

Recent topics of the summer workshops are Stars as Homes for Habitable Planets, Exoplanetary Atmospheres and Microlensing.

The two 10-meter aperture Keck telescopes are located on the dormant Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawaii.

They are operated for the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA), the University of Hawaii (UH), and NASA by the William M. Keck Observatory (WMKO) in Waimea, HI.

NExScI has also developed various software tools to model and plan interferometric observations and to calibrate KI data.

LBTI is designed to explore the regions surrounding nearby star systems for dust and planets and provide super resolution imaging in the mid-infrared.

NExScI personnel were instrumental in the development and scientific accomplishments of PTI, and are largely responsible for its data infrastructure and science planning and processing applications.

NExScI scientists and programmers have had the lead role in developing the Science Analysis System for the Kepler Mission.