Danielle: Hello, my name is Danielle Wood.
I directed the Space Enabled Research Group
at MIT's Media Lab.
We have three areas of research asking
about the intersection between space and sustainability.
The first topic highlights
how we can use today's space technology
and reduce barriers to apply
it to sustainable development goals.
A second area is exploring
how we can design future space technology
to start to make space itself
or activities as humans expand into space,
more sustainable.
This is an opportunity for fresh work
because many things have not been done before
and we could do them for the first time
in a sustainable manner.
Our third research theme asks,
"What does it mean to design complex systems,
whether in space or on earth,
in a way that addresses equity and justice,
particularly with a focus on identity, who we are as people,
our genders, our backgrounds,
our ethnicities, our languages."
Our first research theme at Space Enabled
is asking how we can design today's space technology
in a way that addresses those working
on the United Nations Sustainable Development goals.
This means looking at an array of space technology
and explaining that they do have benefit
in things like providing information, positioning services,
communication capability, and even innovative designs
that can be rethought to support local goals on Earth.
I often do this kind of work in collaboration
at the invitation of leaders
who might be government leaders, non-profits,
or people leading indigenous tribes,
and they see a potential, but need to find a bridge
between their goals and technology from space.
My second research team at Space Enabled asks,
"How we can design future space technologies
to enable sustainability as humans expand
our impact in space.'
I'm excited about all the cool innovations happening
in the space field, but to be honest,
I'm also a bit nervous because we are starting to innovate
in the space field faster
than we can review the impacts of our actions.
So part of our work in Space Enabled is asking,
what can we do right now to ensure future sustainability
and our impact on the space environment,
which concludes orbit around the Earth, but also the moon.
How can we at Space enabled help ensure sustainability
and future human impact in space?
Part of this looks like work to help set standards
and behaviors that space operators can use
to reduce space debris
and other forms of pollution in space.
We also try to design hardware systems that are going
to be more sustainable
because they're creating less pollution
or debris in space.
All this is done as a way to show prototypes
of how we could design practically so that our hardware
and our behaviors are better, both for each other
and the space environment.
Our third research team at Space Enabled is asking,
"What does it mean to design any complex system
to address equity and justice?"
In particular, we consider justice from the point of view
of who we are as people who are people with genders
and backgrounds and languages and culture.
And because of these groupings that we're in,
we experience world differently.
We've already seen from many authors that it matters
to consider who an audience might be for technology.
How does their language and culture
and ethnicity and race and gender and class,
how do all those important variables affect
how they experience technology as a group?
The directions we're taking
in Space Enabled really are rooted in years
of searching without knowing exactly where I'd end up.
There were a few key moments of insight.
I was inspired by a leader named Daniel Irwin at NASA
who started a project called Severe.
Around the same time I was doing my undergraduate studies
at MIT.
I met Dan Irwin as an undergrad intern,
and learned a lot from his project.
He's a NASA scientist who is asking
how he could use NASA satellite data
to help make development choices better
especially in Latin America
as well as other regions around the world.
I was able to learn what is it the countries want
from space to make their country better
and not could a researcher play a role?
So I'd say it was about a 15 year journey
for me to ask these questions
without really having a clear idea where it would take me.
But eventually, Space Enabled is a place
where I can bring together the question,
how can we design space systems
and really any complex systems
in a way that makes a difference on Earth,
especially for those who usually are left out of technology.