July 11, 2017
Moriba Jah, an associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, has been invited by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to provide expert testimony to Congress on space management July 13.
Jah advocates academic researchers work closely with government and industry in developing a public-private partnership to solve space issues, and help commerce thrive in the space domain.
"Our ability to accurately and precisely measure and predict what happens in the space domain is poor at best," says Jah. "We operate in this domain persistently with unquantifiable risks of loss, degradation, or disruption to increasingly critical space services, capabilities, and activities. Knowledge and understanding are prerequisites for sound and meaningful actions."
"The science and technology community must be more engaged in strategic road maps involving national space and security. I'm not advocating for unlimited security clearances, but rather to declassify information that really doesn't require it. By making as much information available to the science and technology community as possible, more data can be submitted to peer review and academic scrutiny."
Jah is director of UT's Advanced Sciences and Technology Research in Astronautics group, and previously worked for the U.S. Air Force, and NASA.
Sen. Cruz, chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, will convene the hearing titled “Reopening the American Frontier: Promoting Partnerships Between Commercial Space and the U.S. Government to Advance Exploration and Settlement” at 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 13. The subcommittee will examine partnerships between the U.S. government and the commercial space industry to advance space exploration.
In addition to Jah, presenters include Robert Cabana, director of NASA Kennedy Space Center; Tim Ellis, co-Founder and CEO of Relativity; Tim Hughes, senior vice president, global business and government affairs at SpaceX; and Jeffrey Manber, CEO, Nanoracks.
