• Innovation & Disruption

As industry looks to the stars for a new commercial frontier, and NASA looks to industry to help broaden the scope of space exploration, Professor Matt Weinzierl considers what this interplay means for the future of the New Space sector.

• Digital Infrastructure

There's no question that the space industry is undergoing drastic change, but how do you create the proper incentives for success with so many interdependent business models within the space sector? Professor Matt Weinzierl offers his advice using the classic game theory model the "stag hunt."

• Data and Analysis

While satellites may be some of our most impressive technology, they are bogged down by a single bottleneck — data. Satellites orbiting Earth routinely struggle to relay data back down to Earth in a timely manner, with sizable implications for the real world, on the ground economy. This is why companies like Analytical Space are hoping to tap into a big data space revolution that is just waiting to happen.

• Digital Infrastructure

Space missions today are an increasing mix of public and private ventures. But what happens when the worst happens and something goes wrong? Who pays for the costly damage? Take a look inside a surprisingly important piece of the space sector puzzle — insurance.

• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning

Machine learning is a popular topic in most industries these days, and it will come as no surprise that this is true for astronomy and astrophysics as well. University of Colorado PhD student Avery Schiff explores how a deep learning algorithm is being used to classify galaxy morphologies in this article from graduate student astronomy journal Astrobites.

• Innovation & Disruption

David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is tasked with an incredible mission — overseeing the selection and study of planets that are viable candidates for life as captured by TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). In this interview with the Harvard Gazette, Latham discusses everything from TESS’s ground-breaking camera technology to the conditions required to foster life as we do (or don’t) know it.

• Innovation & Disruption

The search for extraterrestrial life is bound to lead one place — underwater. To prepare for this reality, scientists from Harvard and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are narrowing in on autonomous ocean-floor vehicles equipped with cutting edge cameras and sophisticated sensors that can wirelessly alert researchers hundreds of miles away when something of note happens. Pretty cool stuff? We’d say so.