Ceri Nunn

Ceri is a lunar seismologist and planetary scientist. After obtaining her PhD in Seismology from the University of Cambridge, Dr. Nunn obtained a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at LMU in Munich, Germany. She joined JPL in 2018 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and is now a research scientist at JPL.

Ceri is a co-investigator for the Farside Seismic Suite, a 2025 NASA mission to Schrödinger Crater on the farside of the Moon. The mission will deliver two seismometers, to be deployed on the deck of a CLPS lander. Ceri is also a member of the Lunar Geophysical Network (LGN) team. Additionally, Ceri is working with colleagues at JPL to develop mission concepts which involve using penetrators (bullet-shaped vehicles designed to penetrate the lunar surface, and embed instruments beneath the ground) to deploy microseismometers on the Moon. The group are also looking at lander-based missions as well as astronaut-installed instruments.

Ceri uses seismology to study the structure of the Moon. She uses historical data from the Apollo missions to learn more about the structure of the Moon. She is also developing new methods to use the data to be returned by the Farside Seismic Suite. The Moon is very highly fractured. Seismic energy from moonquakes and meteoroid impacts is strongly scattered by the fracturing. Ceri is currently studying the scattering of seismic energy to better understand the seismic signals from the Moon, so that we can better interpret seismic signals from the Moon's core and crust-mantle boundary.