NASA Awards Dickerson Exceptional Public Service Medal

July 19, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas—Meet Patricia Dickerson for the first time at her workspace in the Walter Geology Library and you would never suspect that this affable and unassuming geologist has taught and inspired world famous test pilots and astronauts, including John Glenn.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded her its Exceptional Public Service Medal, granted to non-government employees for contributions to the mission of NASA. Dickerson, a research fellow working in the Walter Geology Library at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, was honored for her “outstanding contributions to astronaut training in geology and geophysical sciences disciplines.”

Dickerson has trained more than 20 field teams of astronaut candidates, or ASCANs as they are known at NASA, since 1996. The groups travel to northern New Mexico to study geological features and processes similar to those on Earth's moon and Mars. Dickerson teaches them to use magnetometers, gravimeters and other geophysical instruments to image buried features such as faults. The most recent crews collected data to help assess groundwater resources for the Taos Indian Pueblo.

In addition to field instruction, Dickerson has briefed shuttle and space station astronauts (STS missions 89-117 and ISS Expeditions 1-5) on rifting and mountain-building, including earthquake and volcanic hazards. Understanding Earth processes results in informed photographs from space of scientifically significant features on Earth. A bonus for Dickerson is the opportunity to look through all the images captured during a mission.

Dickerson (right) helped John Glenn (center) prepare for his historic return to space in 1998.

“When reviewing all the film and electronic images, there is always the element of surprise. You may have passed over the middle of Australia 77 times, but then you see something you’ve never seen, because of some quirk of the light or a break in the clouds,” said Dickerson. “It’s just delicious!”

She has also helped select images and provide commentary for astronauts to use as they tour the world following a mission, visiting classrooms and giving public lectures

“One of my goals is to seize upon their enthusiasm and their access, particularly to kids and teachers, to excite people about the earth sciences,” said Dickerson.

Dickerson trains astronauts to take scientifically useful photographs while in orbit, such as this one of the Red Sea.

She began training astronauts in 1996 soon after completing her Ph.D. in geology at The University of Texas at Austin. Bill Muehlberger, a professor emeritus still active at the University, had trained astronauts in geology since the Apollo moon missions. Believing that NASA needed someone to brief shuttle and space station crews on tectonic processes and aid in interpreting Earth images taken from orbit, he recommended Dickerson. She was soon training astronauts with Muehlberger and in 1999 initiated geophysical field exercises in collaboration with colleagues at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources.

“A comment that we often get from astronaut candidates at the end of a field session is that we’ve forever changed their way of looking at the Earth,” said Dickerson. “That’s immensely gratifying!”

In a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston on June 5, 2007, Dickerson and four others were awarded NASA’s Exceptional Public Service Medal.

ASCANs learn how to use geophysical instruments in northern New Mexico to study geological processes and formations similar to those on Mars and the Moon.

“For me, one of the joys of instructing these folks is the gusto with which they seize ideas that are new to them,” said Dickerson. “Most astronaut candidates have little to no earth science background. Yet they’re already well versed in using instruments of all kinds, so there’s nothing intimidating about the technology. When someone pitches them something entirely out of their experience, they reach for it and they swiftly master it.”

In addition to training astronauts, and serving as study leader for Smithsonian natural history tours, Dickerson conducts her own field research on the tectonic evolution of Texas and adjacent Mexico from the Precambrian to the present. She also works for the American Geological Institute contributing references to GeoRef, the most comprehensive database of geoscience literature in the world.

By Marc Airhart (from UT Austin Webpage)