The population of trackable manmade objects, the size of a softball and larger, orbiting the Earth exceeds 22000. Of these, only about 1300 work and the remainder are space debris, garbage. Dr. Moriba Jah talk to us about this growing population and concerns about space traffic for future generations and the roles of government, industry, and academia in delivering solutions to this wicked problem.

Dr. Moriba Jah is the director of the University of Arizona’s Space Object Behavioral Sciences with applications to space domain awareness, space protection, space traffic monitoring, planetary defense, and space debris research. He received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Arizona, and his master’s and doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in astrodynamics and statistical orbit determination. Before joining the University of Arizona, Moriba was the space situational awareness mission lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory, and a spacecraft navigator for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory serving on a number of Mars missions.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx