True Blu: Out-of-this-world dream comes true — Blugold alumna soars at NASA

Lederer still talks about it. But now the discussions often center around planetary systems she helped discover and mission payloads that have landed on the moon under her direction.

Lederer, a 1992 UW-Eau Claire graduate, is a planetary and space scientist for NASA. Based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Lederer found a career she knew she was destined for during those nights of stargazing in northern Wisconsin.

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

Becoming a Blugold

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 recalls. “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 says she also wanted a school where she wasn’t going to be taught by teaching assistants, and one where she would have research opportunities the day she walked onto campus.

“I didn’t want to go to Madison because I knew the graduate students there would get the bulk of the opportunities,” Lederer says. “I wanted a school that was all undergraduates, where I could also have opportunities myself, and ensure that I was being taught by the professors.”

Lederer says she began looking at all Universities of Wisconsin schools and got recommendations from guidance counselors.

“I understood that the requirements to get into UW-Eau Claire, versus Madison, were as stringent, or in some cases harder,” Lederer remembers. “So I took that to mean that I would have a really solid base for my education, which is exactly what happened.”

Lederer took her first major step toward fulfilling her NASA dream by becoming a Blugold. What followed was four years of guidance from professors in the math and physics departments, professors with whom she has kept in contact for the past three decades. The mentorship, guidance and abundant research opportunities created a career launching pad for Lederer.

“It was a really encouraging, nurturing environment to be in,” Lederer recalls. “As a double major in math and physics, you need to apply yourself. And it takes a lot. It’s worth it in the end. But having that support structure of the professors and the math and physics departments was just absolutely critical.”

Four years after walking onto campus, Lederer left with her undergraduate degree, one step closer to achieving her NASA dream.

Making it to NASA

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 advisor happened to know a woman who worked at NASA Johnson Space Center,” Lederer says. “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 says 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.

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

“I got tenure and got promoted at the university,” Lederer says, 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.

Planet discoveries and moon landings

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 says. “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.

“It was a pretty cool, exciting time to be part of that group,” Lederer recalls. “That group was amazing because it’s the first discovery around any ultra cool dwarf star ever. They were some of the smallest planets ever discovered, and three were squarely in the habitable zone.”

Forty light years closer to home, Lederer is now involved in the Artemis program, designed to eventually return humans to the surface of the moon. She is the lead project scientist for NASA’s Commercial Payload Services (CLPS) team.

“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 says.

She says 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 remembers. “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 recalls. “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,” Lederer says. “I wish that my grandfather was still around to be able to see it.”

True Blu is a monthly series that spotlights UW-Eau Claire alumni.