The Next Generation Of Space Leaders

At a time in history when too many things seem to be heading in the wrong direction, I believe there is still hope. Lots of it, actually.

Last week I was reminded that the best is still ahead of us, and the people who will lead this increasingly challenging space world are not just those from the Ivy League or historically elite coasts. While they may have extraordinary resources, they haven’t cornered all the best students and ideas to solve our most vexing space problems. Across the country, thousands of students are thinking about how to tackle tomorrow’s challenges – uninhibited by the confines of the traditional military-industrial acquisition process of the last generation and armed with the “why not” attitude propagated by new pioneers in commercial space.

To hone in on the pockets of creative genius found across the United States, this past year the SmallSat Alliance hosted its first annual Collegiate Space Competition. The design challenge, sponsored and staffed by the space companies that comprise the Alliance, is open to every college and university student in the U.S. – technical or non-technical, from junior colleges to traditional universities. The students are presented with real world space problems that could be partially solved with low cost, off the shelf space systems and components, specifically the new generation of commercially available small satellite technologies.

Today there are already thousands of these refrigerator-sized marvels on orbit, with tens of thousands licensed and planned to be launched over the next decade. This is no surprise to the space enthusiasts who read Forbes, of course, especially with the routine and highly visible punch these little powerhouses have been making in the war to free Ukraine. What this phenomenon presents, like every other advance in civilization, is generational challenges and opportunities.

This year’s Collegiate Space Competition solicited innovative solutions using commercial space technology to solve two issues of long term human consequence that the space business has a responsibility to help solve. The first is orbital debris, a problem which originates from the space industry itself. Debris from old rockets or collisions, decommissioned satellites, and the proliferation of smallsats add up to an increasingly congested space domain – and with it, the concern of limited space and spectrum in low Earth orbit. The second deals with environmental earth monitoring: leveraging satellite constellations to monitor the characteristics of the Earth’s environment from space. In other words, using space assets and data to help address the adverse effects of our changing climate.

When the CSC submissions were evaluated, the points tallied up, the top three winning teams were not from the Ivy League. They weren’t from some other private schools, either. The top three were from state schools – UT Austin and NC State, to be exact.

The winning team, which is from University of Texas at Austin, took on the climate change challenge. The team proposed a plan to map the world’s land mass to determine where the unhealthy soil is by measuring the nitrogen and moisture content of the soil, every square yard of it. This can tell us where healthy soil is and, more importantly where it isn’t. Even just healthy soil, with all the microbes and enzymes that live naturally in it, could be one of the best and most efficient ways to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere. And restoring “dead” soil to health, a natural process that is not nearly as difficult as once thought, is arguably the simplest thing every single one of us can contribute to help limit the effects of climate change.

Once the proposals were evaluated and the top schools and submissions were shared with the Alliance members, friends in industry took notice. The submissions from these college teams were jaw-dropping, with analyses on par with projects that a national laboratory might submit to NASA or the Space Force for funding consideration. The leading space industry journal, Space News even covered the event highlighting the winning team members and the details of the competition.

As chair of the Alliance, I cleared my calendar and traveled to Austin to present the first place award to these students. I wanted to meet them, shake their hands, and thank them for working hard and thinking outside the box. Because these young people give me hope for the future, and I needed some of that right now. I went to lunch with the team after meeting them on campus and heard all the eagerness of graduated seniors about to start their first jobs and sights set on engineering jobs in commercial space. Some students were children of hardworking immigrants, and I got to meet their parents too, telling me stories over some tasty Texas barbeque and justifiably proud of their kids for pushing their potential.

So yes, we have our problems today. But we also have a new generation of students, from schools across the country, who are itching to solve problems we’ve been debating for decades.

This next generation is prepared to rise to the challenge. They are guileless in a way reminiscent of the “Greatest Generation,” who solved many of the problems handed to them from surviving the Great Depression through winning WWII. They will surely inherit the messes their predecessors created, but there is no tuning in and dropping out for these recently minted graduates. They are willing to lead in a way that takes advantage of the limitless potential of the next frontier.

At a time in history when too many things seem to be heading in the wrong direction, there is hope. Lots of it.

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