Hannah McLain is an astrobiologist with the Catholic University of America at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland. Her work focuses on the search for life in outer space looking for the building blocks of life in extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites, asteroids, extinct comets, and lunar samples.
In 2013, Hannah McLain joined the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In 2015 and 2017 she received the NASA Group Achievement Award for her work with the Mars Science Laboratory mission for her work with pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry of mars simulants for comparison to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.
In recognition of Hannah McLain’s meteorite research, the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after her, asteroid (117614) Hannahmclain.
In 2015 Hannah McLain started working heavily with the OSIRIS-REx mission with their contamination control team to make sure that the sample that was returned is as pristine as possible for the people that are looking for signs of life in outer space. This work with the OSIRIS-REx team lead to Group Achievement awards in 2017, 2020, and 2022. Since the sample returned to earth in 2023 Hannah McLain has received a piece of the OSIRIS-REx sample and has started the search for the building blocks of life in the OSIRIS-REx return sample.
In 2019 Hannah McLain continued her search for life in outer space with the JAXA (Japanese Space Agency) completing two rehearsals with the soluble organic analysis team in Fukuoka, Japan before the sample was returned and she was able to analyze the first Hayabusa2 sample in 2021. Her analysis of the JAXA Hayabusa2 samples was awarded the Special Thanks and Recognition in 2022 and the Robert H. Goddard award in 2022.