Women at the Helm of Space Travel

Dr. Darby Dyar is a prominent planetary geologist, mineralogist and spectroscopist and is currently the Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s VERITAS mission to Venus. Dr. Tara Ruttley is a scientist and engineer who currently serves as the Chief Scientist for Orbital Reef at Blue Origin, where she guides the scientific vision for a next-generation commercial space station. Pamela Melroy is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and former NASA astronaut who most recently served as the Deputy Administrator of NASA and is one of only two women to have commanded the Space Shuttle. Dr. Dyar will lead a conversation with these two high flying women about the past, present and future of space exploration

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Net proceeds from this event to benefit the Freeport High School Scholarship Fund and Girls In Engineering, Math, and Science, Freeport Chapter

Lead Sponsors for this event are Amy Woodhouse and Tobey Scott

Enjoy pre-lecture music for 30 minutes before the event

Detailed Bios

Pamela Melroy

Pamela Melroy is a retired United States Air Force Colonel, veteran test pilot and former NASA astronaut who most recently served as the Deputy Administrator of NASA. Having logged more than 38 days in space across three separate Space Shuttle missions, she holds the distinction of being one of only two women in history to command a Space Shuttle mission, leading STS-120 in 2007 to assemble components of the International Space Station. Commissioned through Air Force ROTC after earning a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy from Wellesley College and a master's degree in earth and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she accumulated over 6,000 flight hours in more than 50 different aircraft, flying combat support missions during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Before returning to top-tier federal agency governance at NASA, Melroy lent her systems engineering expertise to leadership roles at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A little-known fact about her tenure as a space commander is her philosophy on crew resource management; when asked about the most critical system to master on a high-stakes orbital flight, Melroy famously noted that it wasn't the computer switches or life support tech, but rather understanding "who gets cranky when they're cold" and managing the interpersonal dynamics of the human crew.

Dr. Tara Ruttley

Dr. Tara Ruttley is a distinguished scientist, engineer and executive who serves as the Chief Scientist for Orbital Reef at Blue Origin, where she steers the scientific framework and utilization vision for next-generation commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. Prior to entering the commercial sector, she spent over two decades at NASA, culminating in her role as Associate Chief Scientist for Exploration and Applied Research at NASA Headquarters, where she championed human, biological and microgravity investigations for the International Space Station and Artemis lunar program. A below the sea explorer, Dr. Ruttley lived as an aquanaut for ten days during an underwater NEEMO mission. Her extraordinary multidisciplinary academic journey includes a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering each from Colorado State, a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Texas and an additional master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Houston. Raised in Louisiana by a single mother, Dr. Ruttley has been a fierce advocate for first-generation college students such as herself. Dr. Ruttley's path to the stars wasn’t a straight line; she credits a federal grant designed to guide underrepresented and first-generation students into doctoral studies for providing the structure and mentoring she needed to succeed.

Dr. M. Darby Dyar

Dr. M. Darby Dyar has a career in planetary science spanning studies of meteorites, Moon and Mars rocks, work on the Mars Curiosity rover, and now serves as the Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s upcoming VERITAS mission to Venus. She recently retired as the Kennedy-Schelkunoff Professor of Astronomy at Mount Holyoke College. She earned her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in art history and geology and her doctorate in geochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her early career, she roamed the mountains of western Maine to study the geologic history around Sebago Lake and studied color in tourmalines from Maine mines. Her field experiences led into decades of lab work, in which she pioneered the application of machine learning to interpret complex spectroscopic data from Earth and beyond. Beyond her peerless academic output of over 350 papers, Dr. Dyar is deeply committed to hands-on undergraduate mentorship, guiding scores of students through rigorous laboratory investigations each year. In 2025, Dr. Dyar was the third woman ever to receive the Roebling Medal for scientific eminence, the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America, 57 years after it was awarded to Dr. Linus Pauling. In what she has described as an uncharacteristically bold move early in her career, she took the initiative to cold-email the designers of a Mars-bound instrument with her own ideas, a single well-timed message that successfully launched her instrumental role in planetary rover missions and led to building part of the rover in her own laboratory. Dr. Dyar is proud to call Freeport home.