Edwin Kite

Mars' near future. I lead a collaboration working on methods for warming Mars using engineered aerosol, in collaboration with the Mohseni nanophotonics group at Northwestern, the Ramirez planetary habitability group at UCF, and the Boies aerosols group at Stanford. Research roadmap: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02242 Early Mars. Mars is the only planet whose surface is known to have become uninhabitable. Once you start thinking about the Early Mars climate problem it is hard to think about anything else. What allowed rivers and lakes early in Mars history? How, when, and why did Mars dry out? How did loss of H2O, loss of CO2, and loss of non-CO2 greenhouse forcing interact with each other? What does the end of surface habitability on Mars teach us about habitability on planets in general? My approach combines the development of new proxies, geologic data analysis with existing proxies, and a hierarchy of numerical models. Rocky exoplanets. I care deeply about atmosphere-interior exchange and the physical and chemical processes underpinning habitability for rocky exoplanets. Europa and Enceladus. I maintain a secondary interest in tectonics, surface-interior exchange, and potential habitability for these ice moons. Member of the Mars Curiosity rover science team. People in my group work in both day-to-day science operations and also science analysis.

[2026] Gasda, Edwin Kite, Thompson, Mondro, Dietrich, and 53 others, Amapari marker band metal-enrichments: Potential mechanisms and implications for surface and subsurface water and weathering in Gale crater, Journal of Geophysical Research, 2026. [paper] [2026] Coy, Xue, Weiner Mansfield, Eastman, Piette, Fairnington, Smith, Zhang, Kempton, Bean, Ji, Gao, Ih, Koll, Luque, Orell-Miquel, and Kite, An Atmosphere on the Ultra-Short Period super-Earth HD 3167 b, in review. [arxiv] [2026] Richardson, Ansari, Fan, Ramirez, Mohseni, Mischna, Hecht, Steele, Sharipov, and Kite, Atmospheric dynamics of IR-active particles released from Mars' surface, Geophysical Research Letters, 2026. [paper] [supplementary] [2026] Braude, Kite, Richardson, Kling, and Mischna, Modelling the long-term impacts of ar