Mission Ready

Order Mission Ready: How to Build Teams That Perform Under Pressure. Publication date is April 21, 2026.

Contact me about speaking on teams, leadership, and space exploration, and purchase the book here:

Hachette Book Group | Bookshop.org | Barnes and Noble | Amazon |

Praise for Mission Ready:

“Space missions fail for human reasons—and succeed because of them. With a great selection of space-flight stories and grounded research, Elkins-Tanton delivers a model for leadership that shows how clarity, kindness, and courage lead to mission success for any team.” ―Bob Smith, former CEO, Blue Origin

“Mission Ready is a powerful guide to building teams that thrive under pressure. Elkins-Tanton shows that when individuals are empowered, culture is thoughtfully built, and leadership is grounded in trust and transparency, teams can accomplish extraordinary things—even in the most challenging environments.” ―Adena Friedman, chair and CEO, Nasdaq

“I’ve been hanging out in high-performance innovation ecosystems for 50 years now—Boston, Silicon Valley, Austin. High-performance teams make the right things happen. One of their key skills is being able to take conversations up a level, to talk about what they are talking about. The good news from Professor Elkins-Tanton is that NASA teams of rocket scientists aren’t much different. Mission Ready is a how-to book about how to practice what she calls ‘metacognition.’ Read it, then send a copy to all your team members.” ―Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet inventor and Turing Laureate

“Elkins-Tanton’s book reminds us of something we know but keep forgetting—that it is not technology alone that moves us forward. People in teams need to make things happen, from small start-ups to monumental undertakings like the NASA Psyche mission. Mission Ready is a practical guide—with checklists, surveys, and actionable advice—but the real experiences and examples chronicled by Elkins-Tanton are what bring these valuable lessons to life.” ―Deepak Kamra, general partner, Canaan Partners

Praise for A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, published by William Morrow: My memoir about life as a scientist and exploration of Earth and space.

Contact me about speaking on teams, leadership, and space exploration, and purchase Portrait through one of these links:

Amazon | Bookshop.org | Google Play | HarperCollins | IndieBound

“ A riveting book, beautifully written. . . . With a brave candor, Elkins-Tanton examines all aspects of her experiences—personal and professional, the good and the bad—to plumb the very meaning of her life. . . . [She provides] a ringside seat to the discomforts and thrills of a geological expedition.” —Washington Post

“ Elkins-Tanton shines in her ability to render the process of scientific discovery in eloquent prose. . . . A wonderful paean to the beauty of scientific exploration.” —Publishers Weekly

“ A deeply personal and enlightening book of one amazing woman’s leadership and teachings in science and self-discovery.” —Col. Chris Hadfield, former commander of the International Space Station and #1 bestselling author of An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

“ The principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission lays bare the challenges and rewards of succeeding as a woman in a male-dominated field and how the sublime beauty of the universe brought her strength and solace. . . . Enthralling and inspiring. . . . A fearless, riveting, and galvanizing book from a star in the U.S. space program.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“ Lindy Elkins-Tanton has led a fascinating life, full of wonder and discovery and also pain and loss. Her memoir, A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, is fierce, absorbing, and ultimately inspiring.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“[A] beautiful and inspiring memoir.” —The Christian Science Monitor (Best Books of the Year, 2022)

“ A captivating story about an exceptional career and a remarkable life.” —Ars Technica

About

That’s me on the left, under the spacecraft. I’m the lead (P.I.) of the NASA Psyche mission. (Media inquiries for Psyche: Ian O’Neill, JPL: ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov)

The origin of rocky planets and the evolution of the solid Earth are the topics of my research. Here’s my peer-reviewed publication list, and the other books I’ve written.

At the University of California, Berkeley, I’m the Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL), and professor in Earth and Planetary Science. The Space Sciences Laboratory has been building and flying robotic space missions for 65 years (want to propose one with us? get in touch!).

I believe that all people should have a sense of agency and confidence in learning and problem-solving. Turner Bohlen, Carolyn Bickers, James Tanton, and I founded Beagle Learning.

Academic research needs to be more focused on big questions, more effective, and more inclusive. Here’s my essay, “Time to Say Goodbye to Our Heroes?” laying it down.

Here’s a bio with some photos. I enjoy speaking and outreach.

Natural World

Hawks. Mosses. Lichens. Fishers. Foxes. Quail. Lizards. I deeply admire and am fascinated by the natural world.

I take photos of natural textures at all scales, and I use a night-time and day-time trail camera, and I work on identifying plants and mosses and insects. And it’s fun to share.

Frost crystals on a cold morning in Massachusetts. Credit: Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Billows of fine grass in the afternoon sunlight feels infinitely peaceful to me. Credit: Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Speaking and Workshops

Speaking about teams and leadership and science and space and learning is a pleasure, whether the audience is from a company, the public, or a school. And I love working with teams, especially tech teams, on developing communications and culture. Be in touch and we’ll schedule.

I give dozens of talks, panel discussions, and workshops per year, ranging from a small elementary school classroom to hundreds or thousands of people at a big public event. You can get a sense of some of my speaking styles on my Youtube channel.

Over the many years that I have worked on teams at junior and senior levels and in leadership, I have seen teams succeed, and I have seen them fail. I’ve found that the human is both the most miraculous and the most devastating part of every story. Science and engineering are the structure of what I am doing, but people are the way it gets done.

I’ve had career-long intersectional experience with teams across the private sector, in government, in academia—I have worked as a management consultant and then as an independent business plan writer for tech startups, as the co-founder of an education tech startup, as an advisor to tech companies and venture capital firms, and as the originator and leader of the NASA Psyche mission.

These projects have been at all stages—in development, in production, and with teams that needed change and those that were purring along. I focus on developing and supporting teams when the pressure is on and the stakes are high.

I’ve been asked to speak about team culture at organizations as varied as Apple, Unilever, Honeybee Robotics, Amazon, and Stanford University. Let me know if you’d like me to speak for your group or facilitate a workshop on communication or culture (I’m represented by APB Speakers Bureau).

Today I am the lead of the NASA Psyche mission, a $1B robotic probe going to a metallic asteroid, and Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. I’m also co-founder of Beagle Learning, where we design learning experiences for the information age and work with schools and communities. I earned my BS, MS, and PhD at MIT, and have worked at Brown University, MIT, and the Carnegie Institution for Science. My CV is available here if you’re into CVs!

My most requested topics are:

Mission Ready: The Art & Science of Exceptional Teams & How to Get Them to Look Up & Out

In our increasingly technical and complex world, we need the best thinkers, makers and problem-solvers. We also want people who can deal with the challenges facing our organizations, a structure that can focus us on the most critical questions and enable faster adoption of innovations. All are possible. Employees can be taught these skills that help them innovate, lead and create change, and processes can be created that set you up for the future. In this talk or workshop, Lindy Elkins-Tanton draws from 30 years of experience leading diverse, interdisciplinary research and technical teams and her process that started 40 pilot projects over the past six years and yielded an 8x return on her investment to date, to show you how to build exceptional teams and how you get them to look up and out.

What’s the Most Important Question? Jumpstarting Critical Research & Building Interdisciplinary Teams

To deal with the challenges facing our organizations and our society, we need a structure that can create knowledge where we need it and enable faster adoption of innovations. This is the moment to reimagine research—for the greatest use of resources, the greatest use of all human minds and the greatest progress into the most positive possible future. Using her process, Lindy Elkins-Tanton has started 45 pilot projects over the past eight years, and these teams yielded an 6x return on our investment to date. No more incremental progress. No more focusing on unimportant goals. In this workshop, she’ll identify the most important questions in your area, and set up teams for pilot projects.

The NASA Psyche Mission: An Electric Journey to a Metal World

“Psyche” is both the name of an asteroid in the main belt, orbiting out past Mars, and the name of our NASA mission to visit that asteroid. Psyche’s density, radar and reflected light properties indicate that it is largely made of metal. Humans have never visited a world made of metal. So if Psyche turns out to be what we think, we’ll be visiting a new kind of world. Our spacecraft launched in October 2023 and is well on its journey through space to this metal world. In this talk, Lindy Elkins-Tanton discusses how a NASA mission is planned and built, the key aspects of a successful team culture and the huge crisis they faced and how they overcame it. Psyche will surprise us. The universe always outsteps even our best imaginations. And the whole Psyche team looks forward to sharing all they discover with everyone here on Earth.

Books

Mission Ready joins these other titles:

Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman by Lindy Elkins-Tanton (William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2022)

My memoir of life as a scientist and exploration on Earth and in space.

Earth by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton (Bloomsbury, 2017)

“Earth is a magical, unusual, curious book…Cohen and Elkins-Tanton describe is as a ‘little book about an impossibly large subject.’ This subject is made even larger by Cohen and Elkins-Tanton’s forays into discussions of beauty, creativity, and imagination…” – PopMatters

Planetesimals by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton and Benjamin P. Weiss (Cambridge, 2017)

A collection of papers for specialists: “… a host of academic cosmogonists, meteoriticists, Solar System dynamicists, and planetary physicists have collaborated to write 17 review papers. These are collected to form this impressive book, one that is beautifully produced, well-illustrated and an ideal introduction to the topic for a researcher qualified in maths and physics … I recommend this book unreservedly…” – David W. Hughes Source: The Observatory

Volcanism and Global Environmental Change by Schmidt, Fristad, Elkins-Tanton (Cambridge, 2017)

A collection of papers for specialists: “Adding immense value to this book are the abundant references at the end of each chapter. Many excellent and relevant maps, charts, graphs, and photographs appear throughout the text. This volume is an outstanding reference for geologists, volcanologists, geochemists, atmospheric scientists, and environmentalists.” – T. L. T. Grose Source: Choice

The Solar System series by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton (Facts on File 2006, 2010)

The set consists of six books written for general-interest readers at high-school or college level: The Sun, Mercury, and Venus; The Earth and the Moon; Asteroids, Meteorites, and Comets; Mars; Jupiter and Saturn; Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System.