Shelli Brunswick is COO of Space Foundation and a speaker on tech used for the betterment of humanity and planet Earth.
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Earth Day is April 22. The world will unite to celebrate environmental progress and raise greater awareness of natural resources. It’s enormously important, but we can’t celebrate without looking beyond Earth itself. Space is pivotal to understanding problems and figuring out how to solve them.
Without space, we would have little knowledge of climate change, how it functions or what its impact could be. Consider the decades of research conducted by NASA. It uses global data to try to identify solutions down to the local level. Its Space For U.S. program draws in observation data from space—about things like tracking air pollution, assessing droughts and monitoring flooding and wildfires.
But NASA is far from alone. Today, more than 90 countries operate in space, with governments and private industry pouring record amounts of funding into space-related activities (the latest estimates place that figure at $469 billion). In truth, more space activities are happening here on Earth than in orbit.
Knowledge Is Power
Yet, very few people realize just how big of a role space plays in life on Earth, particularly as it relates to the environment, so let me share a few examples.
Vertical Farming
The United Nations said that even as population growth slows, there will be 2.3 billion more people on Earth by 2050. These people need to eat, and current agricultural systems will not be able to support everyone. The teams at NASA note that future food production could be hindered “by depleting soil of essential nutrients and contaminating freshwater supplies and soil with pesticides and herbicides.” We must find solutions.
To assist in this endeavor, NASA brought the first “vertical farm” to the U.S. What does that mean? The best way I can describe it is like an intelligent, modern greenhouse on steroids. The NASA blog about it is more specific.
NASA was able to do this based on all of the work and learnings conducted in space; they figured out ways to grow food for astronauts on spacecrafts. While getting your food from a lab or spaceship might not sound so tantalizing today, imagine fueling your body with perfect food sources, free of toxins and hormones. In addition to solving issues of world hunger, vertical farming could prove instrumental in reducing disease.
Food Security And The Prevention Of Waste
There is so much more space work being done all over the world to help combat food insecurity. For example, freeze-dried food. I met three university students from Qatar who took local surplus produce and turned it into freeze-dried snacks to help supplement the nutritional intake of the Qatari people—many of whom do not meet nutritional requirements for fruits and vegetables.
By using freeze-drying technology developed by the space industry, they can now provide a healthy, delicious snack and help our planet by reducing food waste. The trio of young entrepreneurs turned their idea into a startup that has built the foundations of a venture that will create jobs, stimulate economies, reimagine supply chains, and improve the overall outcome for an estimated 10 million people by 2030, which is pretty incredible.
Water Purification
Another entrepreneur, Piush Soni, used NASA’s Technology Transfer program to leverage space technology created two decades ago to develop water bottles with advanced filtration systems. These bottles remove approximately 99.97% of contaminants in water and are much less expensive than other options. As such, they can be adopted in areas where people are getting sick (even dying) from drinking contaminated water from puddles, rivers and lakes in locations where clean water isn’t an option.
Soni has since developed another company using more NASA-based technology to create a powerful water filtration system that can work on purifying larger bodies of water—not just a glass of drinking water. Imagine how powerful this could be as it is extended and applied for future use, not only for humans but also for the wildlife that needs access to clean water in order to survive.
And there is so much more work being done throughout the world in which space technologies play a part, from using satellites to monitor crop health and weather impact to options for waste removal and the installation of solar panels to reduce energy costs and dependence.
Space As Critical Infrastructure
If we want to continue to make positive advances that will help address climate change and preserve Earth’s precious resources for future generations, the most effective way to do that is by designating space as critical infrastructure.
Despite its importance to Earth and our future, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not yet designated space as one of its 16 critical infrastructure sectors, which would make it eligible for more government funding that could fuel innovation. Sadly, in today’s hyperpartisan government, where budget negotiations are contentious, finding more money and support for space technology is not likely to happen any time soon.
This failure to recognize space as critical infrastructure harms more than just our environmental future; it could have consequences for national and economic security that ripple across the globe.
But there is hope. By bringing together the public and private sectors and by working with other countries, space innovation and technology transfers can pick up speed. By removing silos and embracing collaboration, we can make progress for the betterment of life on Earth. And what better time to start than Earth Day?
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