Sir Robert Wilson Lecture 2024: Towards the Habitable Worlds Observatory

This year, the Sir Robert Wilson Lecture will be given by the prestigious Dr Makenzie Lystrup, Center Director of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Title: Towards the Habitable Worlds Observatory

Abstract:  Humans have long wondered if there were worlds around other stars – and life on those worlds. Over the last two decades, astronomers have found that the answer to the first question is a resounding YES. Those accomplishments have put us in a position to possibly answer the second question. The 2020 US Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020) laid out a path to the first telescope that can find out if habitable exoplanets are common or rare and search them for signs of global biospheres, while performing a wide range of transformative astrophysics studies and Solar System remote sensing observations. NASA has dubbed that space telescope the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). This presentation will cover Astro2020’s recommendations and expectations for HWO in terms of scientific goals and technical capabilities. NASA’s current efforts – led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center – to mature the HWO concept will be discussed, highlighting key principles, challenges, and activities. This multi-faceted journey needs enthusiastic collaboration between a wide range of disciplines and stakeholders, including European scientific and technical partners.

Bio: Dr Makenzie Lystrup is the director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center guiding the direction and management of one of NASA’s major field installations. Goddard’s sites include the primary campus in Maryland, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas. Goddard is responsible for the oversight and execution of a $4 billion portfolio and is home to the nation’s largest concentration of scientists, engineers and technologists dedicated to Earth and space science. Its workforce consists of more than 10,000 employees, both civil servant and contractor.

Prior to joining NASA, Dr Lystrup was vice president and general manager of Ball Aerospace’s Civil Space Strategic Business Unit, where she was responsible for the company’s portfolio of civil space systems spanning across all science fields, operational weather and Earth observation, as well as advanced technologies development objectives. In this role, she led Ball’s contributions to several missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), Landsat 9, and the Roman Space Telescope.

Dr Lystrup has also served as senior director for Ball’s Civil Space Advanced Systems and Business Development, where she managed new business activities for NASA, NOAA, and other civilian U.S. government agencies as well as for academia and other science organizations. In addition, she served in the company’s Strategic Operations organization, based in Washington D.C., where she led Ball’s space sciences portfolio. Prior to joining Ball, Dr Lystrup worked as an American Institute of Physics – Acoustical Society of American (AIP-ASA) Congressional Fellow from 2011 to 2012 in the office of U.S. Representative Edward Markey, where she managed a portfolio including technology, national defense, nuclear energy, and nuclear nonproliferation.

Dr Lystrup holds a bachelor’s in physics from Portland State University and attended graduate school at University College London earning a PhD in astrophysics, under the supervision of Professor Steve Miller. She was a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellow spending time at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, and University of Liege in Belgium. As a planetary scientist and astronomer, Dr. Lystrup’s scientific work has been in using ground- and space-based astronomical observatories to understand the interactions and dynamics of planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres – the relationships between planets and their surrounding space environments.

Links

• Dr Makenzie B. Lystrup’s NASA profile