Shawano woman involved in Artemis II moon project

When people talk about the Artemis II mission around the moon, they invariably will note the names of astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist).

Only in places like Shawano and Eau Claire will they talk about Susan Lederer, a planetary and space scientist at NASA, one of many involved in the Artemis program as a lead project scientist for NASA’s commercial payload services (CLPS) team.

Lederer grew up in Shawano before earning bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 1992, a master’s of astronomy at New Mexico State and, finally, a doctorate in astronomy at the University of Florida.

Artemis II lifted off April 1 for a 10-day mission.

“The whole purpose of CLPS is to manifest different types of payloads, instruments on landers that go to the moon to help us better understand the environment that astronauts will experience,” Lederer said in a story by UW-Eau Claire.

Growing up in Shawano, Lederer would stay up late and stare at the sky.

“It all started as a child, because the skies in Wisconsin are amazing,” she said. “You can see the stars out, and that really drew my interest.

“Our parents would let us stay up and get the lawn chairs out. We would lay them flat and watch the northern lights. My grandfather loved constellations and loved space, so I would talk to him about those things.”

Lederer is based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

“Zero people that I knew growing up worked for NASA,” she said. “But I somehow got in my head that that’s what I was going to do someday.”

If she planned on working at NASA, Lederer knew she would need a strong background in math and physics.

“I knew I wanted to be a physics and math double major,” Lederer said. “When I started going through the list of where I wanted to go to school, I was looking for a school that had strong STEM.”

Lederer went on to get her graduate and doctoral degrees in astronomy and astrophysics. While working on her doctorate, she got her first taste of what the future might hold.

“My thesis adviser happened to know a woman who worked at NASA Johnson Space Center,” Lederer said. “She had a postdoc position available, so he put me in contact with her. I applied for a fellowship with the National Science Foundation, and it was awarded to me. So, I got to come to Johnson Space Center to be a postdoc, and it was a phenomenal experience.”

Getting to NASA and the Johnson Space Center is one thing; staying there is another. Lederer said there are not many civil-service positions available at NASA. So, following her postdoc, she accepted a position at a university in Southern California as a physics professor.

Throughout her time in California, she kept her eye open for that NASA position she always dreamed about.

“I got tenure and got promoted at the university,” Lederer said, before her dream finally became a reality. “A position with NASA came available, and so I transferred over. It’s been about 15½ years ago now since I’ve been working for NASA full time.”

The dream was achieved, but what came next is something Lederer may not have even imagined while staring at the sky as a child in Shawano.

In 1999, a red dwarf star was discovered about 40 light years from Earth. In 2016, a team of scientists at the University of Liege in Belgium began studying that star more closely. To do that, they used two telescopes — one in Chile, the other in Morocco. But it wasn’t enough. They needed more telescopes in different parts of the world.

That need led them to Johnson Space Center and Lederer. At that time, she was the NASA lead for an infrared telescope called UKIRT on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. She also used telescopes around the world.

“They asked if there was any possibility they could use a telescope named UKIRT (U.K. Infrared Telescope),” Lederer said. “I was in the Orbital Debris Program office at the time, working on managing the telescope and working with others on this, and so I said, ‘You know, this is a great idea.’”

Lederer became part of the international team researching the dwarf star. That research team discovered a planetary system of seven Earth-like planets orbiting that dwarf star, which became known as the TRAPPIST-1 system.

“This was designed to look for transiting planets around other stars,” she said. “For five years, they looked and looked and looked and got nothing,” she said. “It’s the first discovery around any ultra cool dwarf star ever.”

Lederer is now involved in the Artemis program. She said the magnitude of this latest endeavor hit her when she was sitting at the console overseeing operations for the landing of the IM-1 mission, a commercial venture launched by a company called Intuitive Machines, in conjunction with NASA.

“I’m sitting on console with the headset on, and the director who oversees CLPS comes in and looks at me and says, ‘This is the first time that NASA has landed on the moon in 52 years, and you led the payload teams on that mission. How does that feel?’” Lederer said. “It’s like a speechless moment. How did it end up being me? And the answer is it’s because it’s not just me. It’s a whole team that made this happen.”

That control room was a long way from the lawn chair in Shawano where she learned about the constellations with her grandfather, and the home where her parents provided the encouragement to follow her dream.

“I still have the Time magazine cover from the ’80s with Christa McAuliffe on the cover. My mom included a hand-written note on the cover to encourage me to dream big,” Lederer said. “And my dad opened my eyes to realize that I love to learn, and a bigger, bolder career that included not only teaching, but my own research, and NASA was what would continue to inspire me every day. It’s pretty incredible to be here now after starting in such a small town in northern Wisconsin.”

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire contributed to this report.