Space Safety, Security, and Sustainability: Challenges in Quantifying, Monitoring, and Assessing Resident Space Object Behavior

Near earth space is contested, geopolitically and commercially. The largest known database of so-called resident space objects (RSOs) has roughly 26000 of these ranging in size from a cell phone to the space station. We only track about 1% of hypothesized RSOs that could cause the loss, disruption, or degradation of space services and capabilities that many of us depend upon on a daily basis. Most of what we launch never comes back and we typically place satellites into orbital highways. These orbital highways are becoming more congested. Near earth space is a finite resource and as such is in need of environmental protection and space traffic rules. This talk will explore these topics further and provide the motivation and initial results in a solution toward the development of a “Waze” for space: ASTRIAGraph, a framework to improve transparency, accountability, and predictability.

Dr. Moriba Jah is the director for Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies (CAST), a group within the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Jah came to UT Austin by way of the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory prior to that, where he was a Spacecraft Navigator on several Mars missions. He is a TED Fellow, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Astronautical Society (AAS), the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Dr. Jah is also an elected member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) as well as the International Institute of Space Law (IISL), has testified to the US congress on his work, and has briefed the United Nations Committee On peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS) as an invited member to the US delegation.

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriba_Jah
NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/ocs/summerseries/19/moriba-jah
Youtube: Is Outer Space Sustainable? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWdprZWbjtM
TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/moriba_jah_the_worlds_first_crowdsourced_space_traffic_monitoring_system?language=en