JustSpace March Newsletter
Hello JustSpace friends— oh look, it’s March again! A lot has been happening in the world of space— not to mention down here on Earth— since our last newsletter, so let’s catch up!
Recent Events
We are pleased to announce that, following our recent annual Board elections, we have five fantastic new members joining the JustSpace Board of Directors for 2021: Alissa Haddaji, Jessica Harris, Jordan “DXTR Spits” Holmes, Divya Persaud, and Monica Vidaurri. You can read more about each of our Board members on our website.
We also have four members rotating off the Board: Nicole Cabrera Salazar, Chris Newman, Amanda Nguyen, Michael Oman-Reagan. These four have been with us since our start in 2019, and we want to thank them for their hard work, support, and enthusiasm!
In other news, our co-founder Lucianne Walkowicz was recently interviewed on the Clayming Space podcast. You can find links to listen to their episode, “Towards an Inclusive and Ethical Future on Mars”, at the Clayming Space website.
To Read
Here’s a brief selection of what we’ve been reading over the past few months:
Joe Sercel and Lt. Gen. Steve Kwast wrote an opinion piece in Politico about the need to “create a carefully crafted new field of ‘space ethics’”. While we think it’s important to note that “space ethics” has existed as a field for some time (for example, check out The Ethics of Space Exploration by philosophers James Schwartz and Tony Milligan), we support the authors’ call for the National Space Council to incorporate space ethics in their future plans for the exploration of space.
Another example of the work that’s already being done in the field of space ethics is Deondre Smiles’ excellent recent essay on The Settler Logics of Outer Space. Smiles draws connections between settler colonialist approaches to space and the harmful effects of space exploration on Indigenous landscapes on Earth today.
Speaking of the importance of paying attention to history as we move forward in space, there’s a new article in Scientific American out today proposing that NASA rename the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope in honor of Harriet Tubman. James Webb was the NASA Administrator in the Apollo era, but he previously served as Undersecretary of State during a government purge of LGBT employees known as the Lavender Scare, and there’s been a recent resurgence in the conversation around Webb’s legacy. As the authors of this article, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Sarah Tuttle, our co-founder Lucianne Walkowicz, and Brian Nord, write:
Before she became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, a disabled and enslaved Harriet Tubman likely used the North Star, just as Henry Bibb did, to navigate to freedom. Naming “the next Hubble” the Harriet Tubman Space Telescope (HTST) would ensure that her memory lives always in the heavens that gave her and so many others hope. The HTST could also serve as a reminder that the night sky is a shared heritage that belongs to all of humanity, including LGBTQIA+ people. The time for lionizing leaders who chose to be embedded in a history of harm is over. We should name telescopes out of love for those who came before us and led the way to freedom, and those who are coming up after us who should be cherished.
The private spaceflight industry has also seen its share of controversy in the last few months. In last year’s March newsletter, we discussed the problems caused by SpaceX’s growing Starlink satellite fleet. In December, Jeff Foust reported that Satellite telescope company Viasat has asked the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to investigate the environmental impact of the Starlink constellation, both on Earth and in orbit.
SpaceX has also been busy testing their latest rockets at their launch site near Boca Chica Village, Texas. Activity at the launch site has increased significantly since it was built in 2014, and SpaceX recently began warning Boca Chica residents to expect even more disruptions in the future, in the form of noise, vibrations, broken windows, and potential evacuations. While some of the residents have sold their land to SpaceX and moved away, The Atlantic wrote a year ago that others were pushing back against the pressure to leave their homes. Currently, it seems that conditions have only gotten worse for residents of Boca Chica, with those refusing to leave now stuck having to evacuate their homes whenever a launch is planned. Unfortunately, the SpaceX launch site now stands as a reminder that the projects that are planned for space always have real impacts here on Earth.
How to Get Involved
We’re developing resources for diversity/equity/inclusion/anti-racism reading groups in the space sciences. If you participate in a group like this at your institution, you can help by filling out this survey about your group and their needs
We also invite you to join us every Friday at 12:30pm CT on Twitter on the #JustSpaceTalk hashtag, where we chat about the week’s space news. We hope to see you there!
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