From Earth to Orbit: A Q&A with Astronaut Candidate Lauren Edgar (PhD '13)

Alumna Lauren Edgar (PhD '13) has been selected by NASA as one of 10 new astronaut candidates following a competitive selection process involving more than 8,000 applicants from across the United States. Edgar and her colleagues will now complete nearly two years of training before becoming eligible for flight assignments supporting future science and exploration missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

Edgar, who was working at the US Geological Survey at the time of her selection, considers Sammamish, Washington, her hometown. She earned a bachelor's degree in Earth sciences from Dartmouth College, and her master's and doctorate in geology from Caltech, where she was advised by John Grotzinger, the Harold Brown Professor of Geology and former chief scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory Rover from 2006–15. While in Grotzinger's laboratory, Edgar contributed to several of the Mars missions operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA.

We recently chatted with Edgar about what she is looking forward to as a new astronaut.

Congratulations on being selected as an astronaut candidate! Your background is in geology, which is not a particularly common background for an astronaut. What unique skills do you bring from geology to this role?

It's really exciting that NASA is selecting people with backgrounds in geology. It certainly gives you the sense of where we're heading—back to the Moon and Mars—and making great observations from Earth orbit. That kind of background is needed for this role. In terms of the unique skills that geology brings, I've done a lot of fieldwork on Earth, often working in small teams in remote environments like Antarctica, Iceland, Hawai'i, and parts of the Southwest. That really is analogous to the types of environments that you would be working in, involving a small team on a spacecraft someday. Additionally, the genuine scientific curiosity that goes into making observations and understanding the world around you is something that certainly applies to the role of an astronaut, as well as being able to conduct experiments and analyze the data. A lot of great science is being done on the space station right now, so, hopefully, I'll be able to draw on some of that experience.

You mentioned fieldwork; the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences is known for its emphasis on hands-on fieldwork. What similarities or differences might there be doing fieldwork on another planet or on the Moon?

I got to see these differences firsthand from my previous work as the deputy principal investigator on the Artemis III Geology Team. Our team was helping to define the scientific goals and geological activities for the first landed mission of the Artemis program. Here on Earth, we have the luxury of being able to do a bit more reconnaissance in new field areas. But for lunar or Martian fieldwork, a lot more preplanning needs to happen. You have to decide which location you're going to and determine the key observations you want to make. You rely on a science traceability matrix that will indicate the priority of certain activities and samples. And if you are limited on time, you have to determine what needs to be cut, or what things you can do if you have extra time. It's a very methodical, technical approach to fieldwork. That's a key difference between how carefully you have to plan out an EVA [extravehicular activity] for humans on the Moon or Mars versus Earth-based fieldwork.

But the skills for everything else—from the types of observations that you're making to being able to identify that unique sample that doesn't fit and figuring out how that changes your framework for understanding the geology—are all very similar. It's kind of fun to think through how you can both apply those skills and some of the things that will be very different.

Other astronauts with a geology background include former Caltech postdoc Jessica Watkins and alum Harrison Schmitt (BS '57), and both of them also have a strong Caltech connection. What role did your particular Caltech experience in the Grotzinger lab play in your path to becoming an astronaut?

I love this question and certainly love to see those similarities in our backgrounds. Working in the Grotzinger lab, my background was in sedimentology. I was really interested in surface processes, particularly on Mars, and trying to figure out when and where life arose in the solar system. Could Mars have been habitable? Because of my experience at Caltech, I was able to get involved in some of the Mars rover missions very early on. I worked on the Mars Exploration Rover mission and then most recently the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Those experiences were possible because of the close tie with JPL and Caltech. I'm really grateful for both the mission operations experience as well as the Grotzinger lab group and my experiences in the GPS division. We got to do a lot of fieldwork in some remote environments and experiencing that part of geology really drew me in. That was very foundational in my career path as a geologist. I started out studying Earth and Mars, and then in more recent years was involved in lunar exploration. I got to train some of the previous astronaut classes in geology, so now it's fun to be on this side as part of my own astronaut training.

I'm really grateful for the experiences that I had at Caltech and the great research environment. I feel like I owe Caltech a lot in terms of preparing me well for this role. In addition, I made a lot of really close friendships during my time there and connected with the people that I've worked with throughout my career. So, I really look forward to continuing to connect with the Caltech community and joining a long list of astronauts that have that shared history too.

What scientific questions are you particularly interested in answering as an astronaut?

We're interested in the formation and evolution of the Moon as a model for rocky planet formation. And the moon is a witness plate for the early Earth. The moon shared this whole early part of our history and could keep a record of that early time that no longer exists on Earth due to being erased by our plate tectonics. It's even possible that we might find material from Earth on the Moon.

And we have a particular interest in the lunar south polar region. We're targeting the lunar south polar region for early Artemis missions, and we want to figure out whether there are volatiles like water ice that can help support more sustained exploration on the Moon.

On Mars, I'm excited about thinking through those potentially habitable environments. I feel like we keep getting closer and closer to understanding that part of Mars. There are a lot of great questions we can be asking.

You have said that you enjoy doing handstands in extreme places. How might the physics of doing a handstand be different in a zero-gravity environment or on the Moon? Would it be easier?

It would probably be easier to kick up into a handstand due to reduced gravity, but I think the suit itself has some mobility restraints that might make that a lot more challenging. The shoulder joints on the suit restrict a lot of mobility. Even bringing your arms around to the front of your workspace is hard. So, I had not thought through doing a handstand in a spacesuit, but on the Earth it's certainly been a lot of fun.