From Taranaki to space: Duncan Young’s journey with NASA’s Europa Clipper
- by The New Zealand Herald
- Oct 24, 2024
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“I was always fascinated by astronomy and science fiction, so those kind of things went together with the space missions in the 1980s. The Voyager space probe was flying past various planets while I was a young kid and then I managed to hook up with the New Plymouth Astronomy Society and then the Taranaki Active Astronomy Group.
“They were astronomers who met ... every month. Most of them were in their 40s, and I was this 9-year-old whose mum would bring him along to the meetings, and I would look through telescopes and make subscriptions to Astronomy Magazine, the big US hobbyist magazine for astronomy.
“Yeah, and I was voraciously reading science fiction.”
After leaving Inglewood High School, Young - still fascinated by space - enrolled at the University of Canterbury.
“I went to Canterbury primarily because I knew they had a great astronomy programme, and they’ve got the Mt John Observatory next to Lake Tekapo. And so I went there to basically become an astronomer. And then I learned astronomy has a lot of math,” Young said.
“And then there was geology, which Canterbury was also known for, which has rocks and field trips. So I ended up going into the geology path. I felt more comfortable with that.”
New Zealand scientist Duncan Young with a model of the Europa Clipper spacecraft in early 2022, pointing to a REASON radar antenna
In his final year at Canterbury, Young had a lightbulb moment.
“I realised that you could actually combine the two disciplines, with planetary geology. And there were actually New Zealanders who had made contributions there.
“One of the professors at Canterbury, he had helped train the Apollo 14 astronauts on their geological expeditions on the moon. And then there is Brian Mason, who was a famous astronomer who studied meteorites.
“So I realised I could make a contribution.”
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