TED2019
Moriba Jah: The world's first crowdsourced space traffic monitoring system
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"Most of what we send into outer space never comes back," says astrodynamicist and TED Fellow Moriba Jah. In this forward-thinking talk, Jah describes the space highways orbiting earth and how they're mostly populated by space junk. Learn more about his quest to develop and scale the world's first crowdsourced space traffic monitoring system -- and how it could help solve the debris problem in near-earth space.
Moriba Jah - Space environmentalist
TED Fellow Moriba Jah studies and predicts the motion of objects in space in an effort to make space safe, secure, and sustainable. Full bio
TED Fellow Moriba Jah studies and predicts the motion of objects in space in an effort to make space safe, secure, and sustainable. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I am an astrodynamicist --
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you know, like that guy Rich Purnell
in the movie "The Martian."
in the movie "The Martian."
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And it's my job to study and predict
motion of objects in space.
motion of objects in space.
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Currently we track about one percent
of hazardous objects on orbit --
of hazardous objects on orbit --
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hazardous to services like location,
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agriculture, banking,
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television and communications,
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and soon -- very soon --
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even the internet itself.
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Now these services are not protected
from, roughly, half a million objects
from, roughly, half a million objects
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the size of a speck of paint
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all the way to a school bus in size.
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A speck of paint,
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traveling at the right speed,
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impacting one of these objects,
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could render it absolutely useless.
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But we can't track things
as small as a speck of paint.
as small as a speck of paint.
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We can only track things
as small as say, a smartphone.
as small as say, a smartphone.
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So of this half million objects
that we should be concerned about,
that we should be concerned about,
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we can only track
about 26,000 of these objects.
about 26,000 of these objects.
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And of these 26,000,
only 2,000 actually work.
only 2,000 actually work.
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Everything else
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is garbage.
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That's a lot of garbage.
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To make things a little bit worse,
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most of what we launch into orbit
never comes back.
never comes back.
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We send the satellite in orbit,
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it stops working, it runs out of fuel,
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and we send something else up ...
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and then we send up something else ...
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and then something else.
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And every once in a while,
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two of these things
will collide with each other
will collide with each other
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or one of these things will explode,
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or even worse,
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somebody might just happen to destroy
one of their satellites on orbit,
one of their satellites on orbit,
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and this generates many, many more pieces,
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most of which also never come back.
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Now these things are not
just randomly scattered in orbit.
just randomly scattered in orbit.
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It turns out that given
the curvature of space-time,
the curvature of space-time,
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there are ideal locations
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where we put some of these satellites --
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think of these as space highways.
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Very much like highways on earth,
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these space highways can only take up
a maximum capacity of traffic
a maximum capacity of traffic
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to sustain space-safe operations.
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Unlike highways on earth,
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there are actually no space traffic rules.
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None whatsoever, OK?
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Wow.
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What could possibly go wrong with that?
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(Laughter)
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Now, what would be really nice
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is if we had something
like a space traffic map,
like a space traffic map,
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like a Waze for space that I could look up
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and see what the current
traffic conditions are in space,
traffic conditions are in space,
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maybe even predict these.
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The problem with that, however,
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is that ask five different people,
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"What's going on in orbit?
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Where are things going?"
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and you're probably going to get
10 different answers.
10 different answers.
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Why is that?
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It's because information about things
on orbit is not commonly shared either.
on orbit is not commonly shared either.
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So what if we had a globally accessible,
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open and transparent
space traffic information system
space traffic information system
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that can inform the public
of where everything is located
of where everything is located
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to try to keep space safe and sustainable?
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And what if the system could be used
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to form evidence-based
norms of behavior --
norms of behavior --
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these space traffic rules?
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So I developed ASTRIAGraph,
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the world's first crowdsourced,
space traffic monitoring system
space traffic monitoring system
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at the University of Texas at Austin.
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ASTRIAGraph combines multiple sources
of information from around the globe --
of information from around the globe --
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government, industry and academia --
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and represents this in a common framework
that anybody can access today.
that anybody can access today.
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Here, you can see 26,000 objects
orbiting the earth,
orbiting the earth,
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multiple opinions,
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and it gets updated in near real time.
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But back to my problem
of space traffic map:
of space traffic map:
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What if you only had information
from the US government?
from the US government?
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Well, in that case, that's what
your space traffic map would look like.
your space traffic map would look like.
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But what do the Russians think?
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That looks significantly different.
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Who's right? Who's wrong?
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What should I believe?
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What could I trust?
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This is part of the issue.
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In the absence of this framework
to monitor space-actor behavior,
to monitor space-actor behavior,
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to monitor activity in space --
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where these objects are located --
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to reconcile these inconsistencies
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and make this knowledge commonplace,
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we actually risk losing the ability
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to use space for humanity's benefit.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause and cheers)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Moriba Jah - Space environmentalistTED Fellow Moriba Jah studies and predicts the motion of objects in space in an effort to make space safe, secure, and sustainable.
Why you should listen
All kinds of junk are floating around in space -- old satellites, rockets, other man-made debris -- that pose an increasing danger to space missions. Astrodynamicist Moriba Jah monitors this orbital debris with ASTRIAGraph, a software that tracks the positions and speeds of objects in Earth’s orbit. Jah's vision is for AstriaGraph to become a crowd-sourced citizen-science platform that will make information about space traffic openly available to future generations. His ultimate goal is to make space safe, secure and sustainable.
Moriba Jah | Speaker | TED.com