Emily Stewart Lakdawalla (born February 8, 1975) is an American planetary geologist and former Senior Editor of The Planetary Society, contributing as both a science writer and a

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

. She has also worked as a teacher and as an environmental consultant. She has performed research work in

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

, Mars topography, and

science communication Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities that connect science and society. Common goals of science communication include informing non-experts about scientific findings, raising the Public awareness of science, public awar ...

and

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

. Lakdawalla is a science advocate on various social media platforms, interacting with space professionals and enthusiasts on

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Google+ Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challe ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

. She has appeared on such media outlets as NPR,

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and BBC America.

Education

In 1996, Lakdawalla was awarded her Bachelor of Arts degree in geology from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

. In 2000 she received her Master of Science degree in planetary geology from Brown University.

Career

After completing her studies at Amherst, Lakdawalla spent two years, from 1996 through 1998, teaching fifth and sixth grade science at Lake Forest Country Day School in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1997, inspired by a space simulation project using images returning from the Galileo mission of two of Jupiter's moons, Io and Europa, Lakdawalla decided to undertake independent research in structural geology.

Research

At Amherst, Lakdawalla worked to study deformed metasedimentary rocks of northeastern Washington. Working at Brown concurrently, she performed analyses of radar images received from Magellan, while also processing topographic data taken of the Baltis Vallis region on

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

, in order to model its geological history. Lakdawalla has published research on the topography of a putative

stratovolcano A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a typically conical volcano built up by many alternating layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with ...

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

, recorded by the

Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter image:PIA02040 Martian hemispheres by MOLA.jpg, 260px, MOLA topographic images of the two hemispheres of Mars. This image appeared on the cover of ''Science'' magazine in May 1999. The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) was one of five instruments ...

. She has also worked with an international team to analyze returned Mars rover data, and to evaluate

Devon Island Devon Island (, ) is an island in Canada and the largest desert island, uninhabited island (no permanent residents) in the world. It is located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is one of the largest members of the Arctic Ar ...

as a test site for

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

s (UAVs) developed for use on Mars. Lakdawalla's work with Pamela Gay, ''et al.'', on the immersion of audiences in interactive educational astronomy content, has been cited by further research into social media content classification and delivery of content types through social media. Lakdawalla has also engaged in advocacy for citizen science research projects, especially those involving space exploration, such as CosmoQuest and Zooniverse.

The Planetary Society

In 2001, Lakdawalla joined The Planetary Society as a deputy project manager of the Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars project, an educational and public outreach program on the

Mars Exploration Rover NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rove ...

mission funded by The Lego Group. In 2002, in support of training exercises for Mars rover operations, she administered an international competition, which selected secondary school students for training and travel to Pasadena, California for participation in these exercises. In early 2005, this competition and selection was performed again for actual Mars Exploration Rover mission operations. During a research operation on Devon Island (located in the Canadian high Arctic), which was funded by The Planetary Society, where a team worked to test the location as a potential analogue for unmanned aerial vehicles to be deployed on Mars, Lakdawalla began writing for the Society's online publications. For several years, she wrote web news articles, as well as making contributions to the society's print publications, including '' The Planetary Report'', where she assumed chief editorial responsibilities in September 2018. Lakdawalla left the Planetary Society in September of 2020

Writing

Lakdawalla is a contributing editor to ''

Sky & Telescope ''Sky & Telescope'' (''S&T'') is a monthly magazine covering all aspects of amateur and professional astronomy, including what to see in the sky tonight and new findings in astronomy. Other topics covered include: *observing guides for planets, ...

'' magazine, for which she has written articles about Mars, the Moon, outer planets, spacecraft imaging, and Kuiper belt objects. She has written a book about the design and engineering of the Curiosity rover mission, published in 2018, and is working on a second book, about the scientific discoveries of Curiosity, to be published in 2019. Starting in September 2013, Lakdawalla has penned the monthly "In the Press" column for '' Nature Geoscience''.

Media appearances

Lakdawalla is a regular contributor to the weekly ''Planetary Radio'' podcast. Following Bill Nye's installation as The Planetary Society's Executive Director, Lakdawalla has appeared on television, in webcasts, on Google+ Hangouts, and on Snapshots from Space, viewable from The Planetary Society's YouTube channel. Lakdawalla has been a host for CosmoQuest's Science Hour, interviewing guests, including Bill Nye, about the future of planetary exploration. In an interview with Brad Allen, Lakdawalla discussed the path that led to a career in science communication, the state of human space exploration and current space exploration missions, such as the Mars Science Laboratory. In a December 2013 interview with '' Universe Today'', Lakdawalla discussed candidate locations for life in the Solar System based on geological activity and presence of water. In addition to Europa, Lakdawalla cited Enceladus (a moon of

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

), due to its active salty geysers:

"Those geysers are salty – it's a salt water ocean, so we basically have a world that is conveniently venting its ocean out into space. You don't even have to land – you can just fly right through that plume and check to see what kinds of cool chemistry is happening there. So yeah, I think Enceladus would be a really cool place to explore for life."

Lakdawalla has been interviewed on topics such as China's Jade Rabbit moon rover on NPR's '' All Things Considered'', and she has also appeared on BBC America and BBC World News.

Awards and honors

In 2011, Lakdawalla received the Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award from the Division for Planetary Sciences of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

for her reporting on the Phoebe ring of Saturn. Asteroid 274860 Emilylakdawalla, discovered by German astronomers Matthias Busch and Rainer Kresken at the ESA Optical Ground Station in 2009, was named in her honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on July 12, 2014 ().

Personal life

Lakdawalla resides in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

with her husband, economist Darius Lakdawalla. The couple originally met when attending Amherst together as undergraduates in the early 1990s. They have two daughters.

References

Bibliography

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External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lakdawalla, Emily 1975 births Living people Planetary scientists Women planetary scientists American women astronomers American science writers Science bloggers 21st-century science writers Amherst College alumni Brown University alumni American women bloggers American bloggers Women science writers Sky & Telescope people American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers