Saturday, March 5th, 2022
Special Edition: Our ‘Space Junk’ Problem
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What happens to the stuff we send to space when it breaks or collides with something else? A lot of it turns into what’s often referred to as ‘space junk.’ There are thousands of pieces of junk orbiting Earth all the time. Just this week, one of those pieces - an old rocket - crashed into the moon. There was no major impact on Earth from that rocket part but other space junk could be more of a threat.
Today I’m joined by renowned space environmentalist and astrodynamicist Dr. Moriba Jah from the University of Texas. He’s credited with developing the world’s first crowd-sourced tool to better track objects in space. He’s also the co-founder and chief scientist for Privateer Space, a company working to monitor satellites and debris in Earth’s orbit like never before.
We spoke with Dr. Jah just before the rocket hit the moon. He told us space junk is a much bigger problem than that one rocket and has the power to disrupt not only our future in space, but life here on Earth.
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Guest: Moriba Jah
Dr. Moriba Jah is the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Privateer Space. He is a renowned space environmentalist and astrodynamicist specializing in space object detection, tracking, identification, and characterization, as well as spacecraft navigation.
He is an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is the holder of the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering.
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