Melissa Battler

Spaceward Bound Commander
Crew 55

Melissa Battler is currently working on her M.Sc. in Planetary Geology at the University of New Brunswick's Planetary and Space Science Centre. She is developing a lunar highland regolith simulant, to help validate the design of lunar excavation equipment for upcoming missions to the Moon. During the summer of 2004 she attended NASA Ames Astrobiology Academy, where she began working on a Spanish/American Mars Drilling Project, MARTE. She is still an active member of both the NASA Academy Alumni Association, and the MARTE Science Team. She has served on three Mars Society Canada training and research missions at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah; as Crew Geologist on Expedition One (Mar 2003); as Research Manager/Science Instructor on Expedition Alpha (Dec 2004); and as Commander/Science Instructor on Expedition Beta (Feb 2006), and plans to continue managing operations of many future Mars analog missions.

She is a Canadian Space Agency Student Ambassador, President of Mars Society Canada, co-chair of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG)'s Young Lunar Explorer's committee, Canadian Representative for Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), Advisor to the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) Canada, founder of the Waterloo and Fredericton Space Societies, and a member of both the Association of Mars Explorers and the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Remote Science Team. She enjoys rock-climbing, yoga, hiking, camping, ice-climbing, SCUBA diving, skydiving, traveling, and is working on her pilot's license. Her primary goal is to become an astronaut and to study the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, however she would be almost as happy to train future astronauts, and prepare them for extreme geological, atmospheric, and astrobiological exploration of other planets.