Andrew Dombard

Andrew Dombard

Andrew Dombard, professor of earth and environmental sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is a planetary scientist whose research focuses on the processes that shape the surfaces of bodies in our solar system. He is a geodynamicist who examines the response of a planet’s lithosphere, the mechanically strong surface layer, to various loads.  

Dombard’s focus includes the study of craters, the most common landform in the solar system, formed from the very high-speed impact of a meteoroid on the surface of a body. His targets have included Jupiter’s largest moons, Ganymede and Callisto. 

He has also studied how the lithosphere is impacted by variations in its thickness, caused by localized thermal anomalies such as volcanoes. 

As a member of the Gravity/Radio Science Team for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, he is looking at how subtle accelerations felt by the spacecraft, as it flies close to Europa, might inform on the habitability of this moon. The third-largest satellite of Jupiter, Europa, has a rocky interior surrounded by about 100 km of water and capped by about 20 km of ice. 

He has taken part in expeditions to Yellowstone National Park, served as a crew member on research cruises to the South Pacific and was a member of the Antarctic Search for Meteorites team.