space exploration

Afshin Khan & SustainSpace Win Overall Prize at ESA Contest

BMSIS scientist Dr. Afshin Khan, along with her team member Mark Ciotola, was selected as the overall winner for the 2017 Space Exploration Masters competition. The contest was initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as other government and private space organizations. The team’s project was titled “Plant germination during spaceflight to test for adaptability of crops in long term space missions.” Dr. Khan and colleagues plan to continue developing their idea for improving plant yield through space […]

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The Ethics of Space Exploration

Liz Miller shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Space exploration is an exciting and constantly progressing field. Fulfilling natural human curiosity about worlds other than our own, exploration of our solar system and beyond is generally met with support by people from all walks of life. While the bulk of our effort is put into allowing both objects and humans to survive safely on other planets and moons, there is […]

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The Problems of Contaminating Mars with Earth’s Microorganisms

Rodrigo Abans shares his ethics & society case study, which he completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. There has been much concern about whether humankind is taking enough care in space exploration. There are a plethora of ethical issues. One of these concerns is the fact that anything that goes offworld carries a certain amount of dormant microorganisms. This led to the decision of destroying the Juno spacecraft by crashing it into Jupiter instead of risking an accidental crash […]

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Ethics of Space Colonization

Julia Sullivan shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. For many, the idea of space colonization may seem to be an inevitable fact, with Mars seeming to be within reaching distance, with our only obstacle being time, as our technological advances and scientific understanding no longer feel like limiting factors. This may be so, but one question that isn’t commonly considered is, should we? Yes, humans have explored and expanded across […]

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Funding Space Exploration: Benefits Beyond Space

Shaelyn Silverman shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. On July 20, 1969, a surge of national pride rippled through the entire nation when Neil Armstrong uttered what has become one of the most famous and beloved phrases in the history of the United States: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” [1]. Armstrong had just become the first human to set foot on our moon […]

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Prioritization in Funding Among Competing Projects

Selen Çetin shares her ethics & society case study, which she completed as part of our Young Scientist Program. Given a fixed amount of funding and a series of problems to solve that are related to our future life as human beings; such as the need to explore space, millions of cancer patients awaiting to get cured, or billions of people that cannot afford getting a proper education, suffering from poverty. Which one of them should be of top priority? […]

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Talking Mars with The New Yorker

Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra was recently featured on the New Yorker Radio Hour in a segment titled “Why Do You Want to Go to Mars?” Archive editor Josh Rothman hosts a conversation with Dr. Haqq-Misra and Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer, about the prospects and perils of attempting the human colonization of Mars. [listen to the segment at WNYC.org]

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New Paper: Sovereignty on Mars

Sara Bruhns and Jacob Haqq-Misra recently published a paper titled “A pragmatic approach to sovereignty on Mars” in the journal Space Policy. Sara performed this work during her participation in the BMSIS Young Scientist Program. Below is a short summary of this idea. National space agencies and private corporations have declared plans to send humans to the red planet, with longer-term planets of settlement and resource extraction likely to follow. Such actions may conflict with the Outer Space Treaty, which […]

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How to Colonize Mars

Several national space agencies and private corporations are eyeing the red planet as a target for eventual human settlement, but the language of the Outer Space Treaty creates some ambiguity about whether or not colonizing Mars is permissible. BMSIS Young Scientist Sara Bruhns discusses her ideas about “How to Colonize Mars” on the political science blog of the Guardian. Exclusive economic rights that forgo claims to sovereignty could be one approach, although revisiting the Outer Space Treaty may ultimately be […]

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