Moriba Jah: A Space Environmentalist’s Quest to Protect the Planet

As our eyes, and aspirations, turn increasingly towards the stars, a new concern has emerged: conservation in space. Working to address this new concern is Dr. Moriba Jah. An astrodynamicist, Moriba intertwines the precision of an engineer, the curiosity of a scientist, the visionary commitment of an environmentalist, and the wisdom of indigenous cultures.

Moriba espouses a worldview where all things are interconnected—and in a world beset by human-made climate change, this perspective is more vital than ever.

Born in 1971, Moriba journeyed from his birthplace in San Francisco, across continents to Venezuela, and into the heart of academia in the United States. His multifaceted background has crystallized into a nuanced understanding of our relationship with our environment and a respect for First Nations people.

Now an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, Moriba is pushing the boundaries of how we perceive and interact with the space environment. Despite humanity's collective efforts to explore and use space, we are falling short in engaging in meaningful dialogue with it, he says.

At the heart of the cosmic conservation problem is space debris. Currently, our Earth is orbited by approximately 5,000 live satellites—and approximately 50,000 lifeless pieces of space junk. There are also estimated to be millions of smaller fragments that swarm around Earth, each with the potential to trigger catastrophic collisions. And in the vacuum of space, junk is forever, floating infinitely…until collision.

Moriba is perfectly positioned to tackle this issue. His work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a navigation engineer involved the development of navigation algorithms and performing orbit determination for missions like the Mars Odyssey. His urgent message is this: “We're behaving as though we're choosing self-extinction.” As he points out, what if the satellites that power our financial systems collide with space junk?

Moriba’s significant contributions to space science and aerospace engineering have not gone unnoticed. His name stands proudly amongst the Fellows of the American Astronautical Society, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, and the Royal Astronomical Society. His inclusion in the 10th-anniversary class of TED Fellows, the AIAA class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows, and his crowning glory as a MacArthur Fellow in 2022, are testaments to the recognition and respect he has earned from his peers and the international community.

In 2021, Moriba co-founded Privateer Space with Apple's Steve Wozniak and Alex Fielding of Ripcord. Privateer’s Wayfinder is a freely available, comprehensive platform that tracks active and inactive satellites, space debris, and rocket bodies. The tool, designed for use by satellite operators, governmental agencies, and the general public, is part of Privateer's mission to enhance public education and awareness about space traffic. And to that end, it works: in using it, I was struck by just how connected we all are, by how small humanity is, and by how large our footprint on space—and by extension the planet—really is.

Moriba embodies through practice his belief in interconnectedness. His idea for a circular space economy is inspired by waste management and manufacturing principles, and his principles on space environmentalism are informed by environmentalism on earth. Moriba continues to chart a course for the future of space exploration, reminding us that while we reach for the stars, we must tread lightly in the cosmos.

As a seasoned astrodynamicist and space environmentalist, could you explain to our readers your current mission in protecting earth's orbital spheres?

Even though we think of all of outer space as being infinite, near earth space where we put satellites is not infinite and we don't launch satellites in random places. We put them in very specific orbital highways. Just like we have shipping lanes and airways, we have these orbital highways. When things die, and stop working on these orbital highways, they don't just come off this ramp. They keep on going at these very high speeds. And then we keep on launching more and more things. And so these orbital highways are getting congested mostly by very dense junk that isn’t working anymore, which are then hazards to things that are working, that are providing critical services and capabilities to us.

And so, I look at orbital space like an additional ecosystem that Mother Earth, Gaia, has. We have land, air, ocean, and space.

What is the impact of your work on creating transparency and collaboration and monitoring earth's orbit, and why is that important for sustainability in space?

I'm really incentivized by so-called traditional ecological knowledge or the knowledge that First Nations people, indigenous people have around the globe where there's a fundamental belief that all things are interconnected. I’m also incentivized by the belief that we live in an existential crisis and the only way through it is to have a successful conversation with the environment.

And we are not having a successful conversation with the space environment. So that's where collaboration needs to happen. Unless people can feel empathy towards the problem, then we can't really move towards solving it. And so my whole thing is trying to show people that there is evidence of this interconnectedness and that land, air, ocean, and space are inextricably linked.

And right now collectively, we're behaving as though we're choosing self-extinction, which doesn't make sense. And if we just took our foot off the gas pedal and tried to holistically manage this as an environment that is in need of environmental protection, then maybe we could turn things around.

I think that is really the importance of the work that I'm trying to do.

‍We all saw the sky turn orange in New York, DC, all over North America, as Canadian wildfires decimated the nation. How does your vision for a sustainable space around earth fit in with our vision of sustainability for the land itself?

Yes. The way it fits in is that the type of behaviors indigenous people have in applying traditional ecological knowledge—that behavior can not only be applied on land, but can be applied on the ocean, air and space.

One of the main things is understanding that there are unintended consequences of our actions. And Mother Nature always gives us feedback on our inputs if we just allow her to show us. And right now? The way we're behaving in space, we're making actions that far outpace Mother Nature's ability to give us feedback.

And so to me, the underlying thing I'm trying to show is if we apply this in space, we'll achieve sustainability in space. And we can use this as a recipe book to apply that to other domains as well.

I played around with Wayfinder. It's very fun to play with—it's incredible how it makes you realize just how much stuff we have around the Earth. Could you help us understand the role of these tools in understanding the space environment? How can an average person use it and benefit from it?

I think thing number one is showing humanity evidence of the pollution in space so that it can see, hey, whenever we explore things like land, air, ocean, we tend to pollute as a product of our exploration. Space is no different.

We should probably look at what behaviors we can change to start avoiding that. And what Privateer is trying to do—because its ethos is embedded in this interconnectedness and the need to embrace our intergenerational contract of stewardship of Spaceship Earth...part of that is through transparency.

And for raising awareness, Wayfinder can be used by satellite operators, but also can be used by the general public just to gain awareness and be connected with the sky again, because most people are disconnected from the sky. I mean, we know the sun's there, the moon's there, but most of us live in cities with lots of lights. We don't even see stars.

And this is just to show humanity: hey, you know, while you're sleeping, here's what's happening in space. The sky is something that's common to all of humanity, and we need to have a voice to say how it's utilized and how we move forward with it.

It's such a rarity to see stars these days, which is a horrific thing, really. In terms of your advocacy for space environmentalism, could you describe the tenets of this framework and why it's important to consider space as an environmental concern?

Humanity knows more about itself and what's going on on earth because of data and information provided by satellites than by any other source of information. And so everything from communications, financial transactions, GPS with position navigation and timing, earth observation for climate monitoring, and even things like the war in Ukraine—these robots in the sky that we call satellites provide these unique data sets.

None of these are protected from harm, from getting slammed into by a piece of junk that we couldn't predict is on some collision course with it or whatever.

For example financial frameworks around the globe critically depend on space infrastructure. And if that goes away, if markets shut down, or people go to an ATM and can't get money out? That's horrible. That would shut down society in ways that I don't even want to begin to imagine. And people are just not aware or are even taking for granted these sorts of hazards.

If for no other reason, we should be space environmentalists for the self preservation of the technologies that we use and depend upon on a daily basis.

Wayfinder really did make me think about all the satellites that are out there and how reliant we are on them. You've proposed policies for a circular space economy. Could you talk about what that means?

Circular economies come from waste management lingo. Linear economies really don't care about the end of life of products. It's all about short-term myopic profit gains. Instead of that, circular economies try to find ways to care about the end of life. By minimizing pollution first and foremost by prioritizing reusability and recyclability of products.

And so, applying this to space, just like we're trying to minimize single use plastics, I say, let's try to minimize single use satellites and rockets. Elon Musk has shown that rockets can be reused and recycled—but we don't have any reusable or recyclable satellites. That’s something that we should, that governments should focus on incentivizing industry to do.

How do we do responsible disposal so we're not just abandoning these things on orbit when they run out of gas, for example, and just keep on launching things? So that's the idea behind a circular space economy.

There's a lot of parallels there with sustainable principles for the earth as well, in terms of closed loop manufacturing, for example...

I borrowed from that because I don't like making up my own jargon. I like looking at what other people are doing in other domains that are leading to sustainable practices, and saying, can we just apply that for space? So it's based on that.

Amazing. What, in your opinion, is the future of international cooperation in Space Affairs? And how can we ensure equitable access and sustainability?

This is what I've told governments when they ask me that question: I say, the first thing that you need to do is invite First Nations people to the table and ask them how to achieve these things. And you're going to hear some things that may shock you and you should think very seriously about applying them.

So yeah, I talk to First Nation people about what it means to cooperate when you need to have a common good, especially for our own survivability as a species.

How does machine learning come into play in your work? And could you explain its significance in understanding earth's orbital sphere?

So the thing about machine learning and artificial intelligence is that they are inherently dumb. They assume that tomorrow looks like today. So if the version of today that you feed it is very limited, then it's ability to predict what tomorrow's going to be is going to be limited as well.

So the thing that you want to do with machine learning and AI is feed it lots of todays—and many different types of todays—so that it has as much diversity of training data as possible. That way it can make a more informed prediction of what tomorrow will be like. To that end, it's very important to collect and gather massive quantities of data, which is what we're trying to do with Privateer, so that we can then say, now we have meaningful and relevant data sets to train machines on so that we can improve predictive models.

Last question. A lot of your work is communicating complex topics to the general public. How do you bridge the gap to these complex space topics and raise that public awareness?

First and foremost, I see myself as a member of humanity, just like anybody. I'm no more, no less than anybody else. And technical problems are large, political problems might even be larger, but the absence of empathy is the largest.

And so I realized that in order to really make this mainstream across humanity, I have to work through the arts. That means speaking, that means writing, that means effective and compelling storytelling. That means maybe writing some rap songs about space debris, for example. So I'm getting involved in all those sorts of things.

And I would ask for people to go to Moriba.com. You can sign up for the newsletter, find out what the next steps are, we’re going to be putting some great things out soon!

‍Images courtesy of: Moriba Jah, Privateer