Maria Banks is a geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she studies geologic processes landforms on Earth and compares them to similar features on Mars, Mercury, and the Moon. She earned a PhD in geology and planetary science from the University of Arizona and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum from 2009-2014.  Prior to NASA, she worked at the Planetary Science Institute for three years. Maria has conducted fieldwork in Alaska, Iceland, Hawaii, and across the contiguous United States. Growing up in upstate New York, she developed a passion for studying the glaciated landscapes of North America, which inspired her dissertation on glacial landforms and processes on Earth and Mars. She lived and worked on the West Antarctic ice sheet for three months during an ice core-drilling expedition.  

Maria enjoys working with the science teams for NASA missions including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as well as the Phoenix Mars and InSight Missions that landed on Mars. She was the project scientist for the NASA instruments aboard the Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed successfully on the Moon in 2025. For the 2026 Artemis II mission, she served as vehicle camera science lead and helped train the astronauts for the science investigations they would conduct on the Moon.

Maria is also a professional harpist who has traveled around the world three times performing on music 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 U.S. In her spare time, Maria enjoys hiking and scuba diving.