1 00:00:01,146 --> 00:00:03,527 I am an astrodynamicist -- 2 00:00:03,551 --> 00:00:07,011 you know, like that guy Rich Purnell in the movie "The Martian." 3 00:00:07,885 --> 00:00:13,762 And it's my job to study and predict motion of objects in space. 4 00:00:15,172 --> 00:00:20,924 Currently we track about one percent of hazardous objects on orbit -- 5 00:00:21,714 --> 00:00:24,831 hazardous to services like location, 6 00:00:24,855 --> 00:00:27,205 agriculture, banking, 7 00:00:27,229 --> 00:00:29,196 television and communications, 8 00:00:29,220 --> 00:00:31,086 and soon -- very soon -- 9 00:00:31,110 --> 00:00:32,783 even the internet itself. 10 00:00:33,892 --> 00:00:40,089 Now these services are not protected from, roughly, half a million objects 11 00:00:40,113 --> 00:00:42,233 the size of a speck of paint 12 00:00:43,060 --> 00:00:45,210 all the way to a school bus in size. 13 00:00:46,398 --> 00:00:48,272 A speck of paint, 14 00:00:48,296 --> 00:00:51,151 traveling at the right speed, 15 00:00:51,175 --> 00:00:52,733 impacting one of these objects, 16 00:00:52,757 --> 00:00:54,976 could render it absolutely useless. 17 00:00:56,394 --> 00:01:00,319 But we can't track things as small as a speck of paint. 18 00:01:00,694 --> 00:01:04,858 We can only track things as small as say, a smartphone. 19 00:01:05,605 --> 00:01:10,471 So of this half million objects that we should be concerned about, 20 00:01:10,495 --> 00:01:14,652 we can only track about 26,000 of these objects. 21 00:01:14,676 --> 00:01:20,318 And of these 26,000, only 2,000 actually work. 22 00:01:21,805 --> 00:01:22,955 Everything else 23 00:01:23,764 --> 00:01:24,914 is garbage. 24 00:01:26,481 --> 00:01:27,849 That's a lot of garbage. 25 00:01:28,227 --> 00:01:30,155 To make things a little bit worse, 26 00:01:31,356 --> 00:01:35,425 most of what we launch into orbit never comes back. 27 00:01:37,496 --> 00:01:40,107 We send the satellite in orbit, 28 00:01:40,131 --> 00:01:43,099 it stops working, it runs out of fuel, 29 00:01:43,123 --> 00:01:45,758 and we send something else up ... 30 00:01:45,782 --> 00:01:48,147 and then we send up something else ... 31 00:01:48,171 --> 00:01:49,662 and then something else. 32 00:01:49,686 --> 00:01:51,215 And every once in a while, 33 00:01:51,239 --> 00:01:53,769 two of these things will collide with each other 34 00:01:53,793 --> 00:01:55,564 or one of these things will explode, 35 00:01:55,588 --> 00:01:56,783 or even worse, 36 00:01:56,807 --> 00:02:00,492 somebody might just happen to destroy one of their satellites on orbit, 37 00:02:01,595 --> 00:02:05,254 and this generates many, many more pieces, 38 00:02:05,278 --> 00:02:07,880 most of which also never come back. 39 00:02:08,748 --> 00:02:12,508 Now these things are not just randomly scattered in orbit. 40 00:02:13,715 --> 00:02:16,960 It turns out that given the curvature of space-time, 41 00:02:16,984 --> 00:02:18,946 there are ideal locations 42 00:02:18,970 --> 00:02:20,956 where we put some of these satellites -- 43 00:02:20,980 --> 00:02:23,731 think of these as space highways. 44 00:02:25,344 --> 00:02:27,233 Very much like highways on earth, 45 00:02:27,257 --> 00:02:31,976 these space highways can only take up a maximum capacity of traffic 46 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:35,780 to sustain space-safe operations. 47 00:02:37,014 --> 00:02:39,350 Unlike highways on earth, 48 00:02:39,374 --> 00:02:41,586 there are actually no space traffic rules. 49 00:02:41,610 --> 00:02:43,543 None whatsoever, OK? 50 00:02:45,662 --> 00:02:46,812 Wow. 51 00:02:48,450 --> 00:02:50,395 What could possibly go wrong with that? 52 00:02:50,419 --> 00:02:51,786 (Laughter) 53 00:02:52,482 --> 00:02:54,797 Now, what would be really nice 54 00:02:54,821 --> 00:02:58,459 is if we had something like a space traffic map, 55 00:02:58,483 --> 00:03:01,506 like a Waze for space that I could look up 56 00:03:01,530 --> 00:03:04,297 and see what the current traffic conditions are in space, 57 00:03:04,321 --> 00:03:05,755 maybe even predict these. 58 00:03:05,779 --> 00:03:07,882 The problem with that, however, 59 00:03:07,906 --> 00:03:11,268 is that ask five different people, 60 00:03:12,337 --> 00:03:13,740 "What's going on in orbit? 61 00:03:13,764 --> 00:03:14,979 Where are things going?" 62 00:03:15,003 --> 00:03:17,676 and you're probably going to get 10 different answers. 63 00:03:17,700 --> 00:03:19,082 Why is that? 64 00:03:19,106 --> 00:03:23,916 It's because information about things on orbit is not commonly shared either. 65 00:03:25,187 --> 00:03:27,682 So what if we had a globally accessible, 66 00:03:27,706 --> 00:03:31,054 open and transparent space traffic information system 67 00:03:31,078 --> 00:03:34,093 that can inform the public of where everything is located 68 00:03:34,117 --> 00:03:37,097 to try to keep space safe and sustainable? 69 00:03:37,121 --> 00:03:40,725 And what if the system could be used 70 00:03:40,749 --> 00:03:43,726 to form evidence-based norms of behavior -- 71 00:03:43,750 --> 00:03:45,322 these space traffic rules? 72 00:03:45,830 --> 00:03:47,989 So I developed ASTRIAGraph, 73 00:03:48,013 --> 00:03:51,778 the world's first crowdsourced, space traffic monitoring system 74 00:03:51,802 --> 00:03:53,596 at the University of Texas at Austin. 75 00:03:54,694 --> 00:03:59,976 ASTRIAGraph combines multiple sources of information from around the globe -- 76 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:01,917 government, industry and academia -- 77 00:04:01,941 --> 00:04:05,958 and represents this in a common framework that anybody can access today. 78 00:04:07,249 --> 00:04:11,759 Here, you can see 26,000 objects orbiting the earth, 79 00:04:11,783 --> 00:04:13,612 multiple opinions, 80 00:04:13,636 --> 00:04:16,109 and it gets updated in near real time. 81 00:04:16,447 --> 00:04:20,053 But back to my problem of space traffic map: 82 00:04:20,077 --> 00:04:23,446 What if you only had information from the US government? 83 00:04:24,018 --> 00:04:27,392 Well, in that case, that's what your space traffic map would look like. 84 00:04:27,989 --> 00:04:30,379 But what do the Russians think? 85 00:04:33,343 --> 00:04:35,293 That looks significantly different. 86 00:04:35,881 --> 00:04:38,034 Who's right? Who's wrong? 87 00:04:38,058 --> 00:04:39,463 What should I believe? 88 00:04:39,487 --> 00:04:40,847 What could I trust? 89 00:04:40,871 --> 00:04:42,335 This is part of the issue. 90 00:04:43,864 --> 00:04:50,641 In the absence of this framework to monitor space-actor behavior, 91 00:04:51,421 --> 00:04:53,694 to monitor activity in space -- 92 00:04:53,718 --> 00:04:55,469 where these objects are located -- 93 00:04:55,493 --> 00:04:58,430 to reconcile these inconsistencies 94 00:04:58,454 --> 00:05:00,910 and make this knowledge commonplace, 95 00:05:00,934 --> 00:05:04,555 we actually risk losing the ability 96 00:05:05,580 --> 00:05:08,626 to use space for humanity's benefit. 97 00:05:10,393 --> 00:05:11,552 Thank you very much. 98 00:05:11,576 --> 00:05:16,206 (Applause and cheers)