Episode 48: Rules of the Road are Needed in Outer Space
Along with asteroids and comets, there are some 500-thousand pieces of space junk flying around in outer space at speeds up to 17-thousand miles an hour. Roughly 21-thousand of these pieces of space junk are larger than a softball and even a fleck of paint from an old rocket can do serious damage when it hits something going that fast. A UofA research initiative called Space Object Behavioral Sciences or SOBS, headed by Moriba Jah will examine objects in space, including locating of satellites and studying the movement of objects and managing space traffic. SOBS is considered a very important area of study within the space sciences because military, civil and commercial systems in more and more countries have become heavily reliant on satellites for day-to-day operations. Take for example, GPS navigation. Millions of people with smartphones rely on apps like Google Maps, without realizing that it is powered remotely by satellites in space. In this episode: Moriba Jah, Director of the UofA's space object behavioral sciences initiative. He received his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado; Tim Swindle, Ph.D., Director and Department Head of the UofA's Lunar and Planetary Lab.