A journey into space policy

In the days of the Apollo program, abstraction argumentation wasn’t truly astir rockets, it was astir planetary politics: beating the Soviets to the moon. But successful the 21st century, with abstraction present populated by thousands of satellites, telescopes, and different technologies, abstraction argumentation has go acold much complex. So aft earning her grade successful aerospace engineering, Mariel Borowitz ’06 decided to displacement her focus.   

“I loved engineering and I loved planetary affairs, but I didn’t cognize a batch astir what was successful the intersection of those 2 spaces,” says Borowitz, an subordinate prof successful the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs astatine Georgia Tech. “It’s conscionable a full antithetic satellite to spot that broadside of it. What’s the due relation of government? What’s the due relation of backstage industry, and wherever is the intersection betwixt them?”

After earning a PhD successful nationalist argumentation astatine the University of Maryland, Borowitz joined the Georgia Tech faculty, past was elaborate to NASA office arsenic a argumentation expert for the Science Mission Directorate successful 2016. Today, she collaborates with policymakers connected abstraction security, unfastened entree to Earth outer data, and abstraction situational awareness, which involves keeping each the satellites present spinning astir the Earth retired of each other’s way. That requires information sharing among idiosyncratic nations and assorted backstage companies. She testified to Congress astir the contented past spring.

“The US subject operates the astir precocious abstraction surveillance strategy successful the world,” she says. “They make warnings erstwhile 2 satellites from immoderate state mightiness person a collision, but it’s not people thing that the subject would do. So arsenic that occupation has been increasing, there’s a propulsion to displacement that implicit to a civilian agency. This proceeding was trying to get into the details of what does that really look like.”

In 2017 Borowitz published Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data. “There are much than 35 nations that person owned oregon operated an Earth reflection satellite, and besides present a fig of commercialized entities arsenic well. I look astatine however bash they woody with their data, who bash they stock it with. It’s truthful important, due to the fact that a batch of our knowing of clime alteration and things happening connected a planetary standard comes from outer data.” 

Space isn’t conscionable for astronauts and engineers anymore. “These are things that impact everyone, but precise fewer radical are acquainted with the details,” she says. While caller abstraction tech gets each the attention, those details of argumentation are the cardinal to champion realizing the committedness and imaginable of abstraction for everyone.