From East Lyme High School to the moon (of Jupiter): One woman's journey - theday.com

January 01, 2024 9:56 am • Last Updated: January 01, 2024 5:10 pm

East Lyme High School alumna and planetary scientist Ingrid Daubar’s path took her from the local planetarium to to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ashley McCabe)

Planetary scientist Ingrid Daubar wants students to know there are many different paths available to them in the sciences, including the one that took her from the East Lyme High School Planetarium to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Almost 30 years from her high school graduation, Dauber is now a staff scientist with the laboratory’s Europa Clipper Project and an associate research professor at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The Europa Clipper mission is NASA’s latest effort to find out if Jupiter’s icy moon can support life by sending a spacecraft into the planet’s orbit.

Daubar was animated over Zoom as she described an ocean of water beneath the moon’s ice shell and the possibilities it might hold. She talked about Jupiter’s strong gravity and its effect on tides, which stretch and pull the moon to produce heat. That opens the possibility of warm rock on the ocean floor that could lend itself to the creation of energy conducive to life, according to Daubar.

“It’s one year to launch, so we’re in kind of an excited, celebratory mood,” she said. “All the instruments are delivered and they’re all working and they’re being integrated together and being tested.”

Daubar, a 1995 graduate of East Lyme High School, said she wasn’t sure which direction she wanted to go when she took an astronomy class taught by the late Robert Meyer. The class made use of the school planetarium built decades before in the wake of the first moon landing. Her fascination grew from the immersive nature of lessons projected on a 25-foot dome directly overhead and the implications they held outside the classroom.

“It kind of connected to the real world because I could go out at night in my backyard and see the stars and know that there’s a whole lot more to learn about them,” she said.

Looking back, she said, she’s become more comfortable over time being herself in a field dominated by men. But that wasn’t always the case on the trajectory that put her in a freshman physics class at New York’s Cornell University as one of only two women. She described a “death by 1,000 cuts” as little comments on the way devalued her progress, from surprise when she did well on an entrance exam to shock she made it as far as she did.

“It’s a difficult situation to be in,” she said. “I was stubborn, so I persisted, but I know a lot of women that have left the field because it’s difficult.”

Twists and turns

Daubar had some doubts early in her career about pursuing the limited range of jobs within the planetary sciences she’d been exposed to as an undergraduate and graduate student.

After earning a master’s degree in planetary science at the University of Arizona in 2002, Daubar took her eyes from the skies to focus on desk jobs doing marketing for a trucking company and editing textbooks.

“I had some twists and turns along the way,” she said of her career path. “I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do that, so I took some time off.”

She didn’t realize at the time that the study of science wasn’t the single, linear path her mentors up until then had emulated. She described professors who’d come up through the academic ranks in the same way to end up in the same place.

It wasn’t until she took a job on a mission operations team for the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that she realized how many paths exist in the planetary sciences, from areas focused on math to those focused on the artistic side of photographs, animations and film.

For her part, she worked on the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HIRISE) as a liaison between the scientists and engineers responsible for the camera that would photograph targeted sections of the red planet. The spacecraft launched in 2005.

“The part I really loved was the uplink part, which involved targeting specific places of Mars for the camera to image,” she said. “And then actually sending commands to a spaceship in space on its way to Mars was just super exciting.”

Daubar’s NASA experience also includes work on the Juno mission studying Jupiter and the InSight mission that put a lander on Mars.

Space and beyond

Back in East Lyme, where Daubar got her start, efforts are underway to revive the planetarium stripped of its hulking metal projector and theater-style seating in 2013.

Her father, Justin Daubar, was integral in the purchase of a new digital projector for the nonprofit Stars to Stem organization. The group has been working since 2017 to revive the planetarium as a regional resource. He agreed to match donations up to $10,000 for a fundraising campaign in 2021.

He said in a phone interview he is motivated to help provide opportunities for students to learn about as many of the sciences as possible so they can better decide “which way to go with their own future.”

He emphasized the software available for the projector can project a wide array of topics onto the dome.

“You hear the word planetarium, you think of stars and space,” he said. “That Digistar projector can be used for many other subjects.”

Stars to Stem founder and President Diane Swan recently said she’s seeking sources of funding for software that incorporates options focused on the arts, such as color wheels and spirographs, while continuing to explore traditional science, technology, engineering and math topics ranging from the human body and weather patterns to the periodic table of the elements.

Justin Daubar’s focus on emphasizing the diverse ways science can be taught and understood is evident in his daughter.

Ingrid Daubar said working as a research professor while participating in NASA missions gives her the opportunity to show students there are as many ways to practice science as there are ways to get there.

“It’s not going to be a linear path all the time,” she said. “But eventually, hopefully, you end up where you need to be.”

e.regan@theday.com

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