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Moriba Jah
Born
Moriba Kemessia Jah

(1971-03-23) March 23, 1971 (age 53)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
EducationEmbry–Riddle Aeronautical University (BS)
University of Colorado, Boulder (MS, PhD)
Known forSpace Situational Awareness Programme, space surveillance and tracking, space traffic management,
Spouses
Maria Renee Washington
​
​
(m. 1991; div. 1999)​
Cassaundra Renea Shafer
​
​
(m. 2002; div. 2024)​
Children3
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Texas at Austin
University of Arizona
Air Force Research Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
ThesisMars aerobraking spacecraft state estimation by processing inertial measurement unit data (2005)
Doctoral advisorGeorge Born
Other academic advisorsRonald Madler, Penina Axelrad
Websiteutexas.academia.edu/MoribaJah

Moriba Kemessia Jah CorrFRSE (born 1971) is an American space scientist and aerospace engineer who describes himself as a "space environmentalist".[1] He specializes in orbit determination and prediction, especially as related to space situational awareness and space traffic monitoring. He is currently a full professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, a position he attained in 2024, and a National Geographic Explorer. Jah has co-founded Privateer Space x Orbital Insight, GaiaVerse, and Moriba Jah Universal. His work now broadly focuses on decision intelligence to improve the stewardship of the planet and beyond.

In 2024, Privateer Space acquired Orbital Insight, a satellite imagery analytics company, following Series A Funding. Jah has authored a number of academic papers, including Entropy-based approach for uncertainty propagation of nonlinear dynamical systems.[2] Jah previously worked as a spacecraft navigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was involved in navigation for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rover, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society, the Air Force Research Laboratory,[3] the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, and the Royal Astronomical Society. Jah was selected for the 10th anniversary class of TED Fellows and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022.[4] He also was selected for the AIAA class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows in the year of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11.[5][6][7][8] Jah's work has been featured in Nature,[9] Popular Science,[10] and National Geographic.[11]

Early life and education

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Jah was born in San Francisco, California to Elsie Turnier from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and Abraham Jah from Pujehun, Sierra Leone. Jah's parents divorced when he was two years old. He moved to Venezuela at the age of six.[12] After graduating, Jah moved back to the United States and enlisted in the United States Air Force where he served as a Security Policeman.[12]

Following his enlistment, he studied Aerospace Engineering at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott Arizona and earned a bachelor's degree in 1999.[13] He was inspired to become an astrodynamicist by Ron Madler.[14] He later spent a year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory working on space mission design.[14] He then spent two years at Microcosm, performing the orbital analysis for several satellite constellations.[14]

He went to the University of Colorado Boulder for his graduate studies, earning a master's in 2001 and PhD, under the supervision of George Born, in 2005.[15] During his PhD he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a navigation engineer, developing the navigation algorithms and performing orbit determination for several missions, including the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Exploration Rover.[16] His doctoral thesis looked at aerobraking spacecraft, using an Unscented Kalman Filter to estimate the spacecraft trajectory to explore ways to automate aerobraking operations.[15]

In 2006, Jah left NASA JPL and became a Senior Scientist at Oceanit Laboratories on Maui, which involved using optical data to determine space trajectories.[17][18] He was then awarded the NASA Space Act Award for his work on the Inertial Measurements for Aero-assisted Navigation (IMAN), in 2007.[13][19]

Career

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In 2007 Jah joined the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).[17] He directed the AFRL Advanced Sciences and Technology Research Institute for Astronautics (ASTRIA) in Maui from 2007 to 2010 and then at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico until 2014.[20] At Kirtland Air Force Base, Jah was mission lead in Space Situational Awareness and advised the satellite guidance and control program.[20]

He left in 2016 to become an associate professor at the University of Arizona.[13] He served as director of the University of Arizona's Space Object Behavioral Sciences initiative. There he developed techniques to track and understand the 23,000+ synthetic objects inside Earth's orbit, (of which only 1,500 are operational).[12]In 2017, Jah joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.[21] There he focused on building models of space debris that quantify the space object population.[22][23]

Jah has stated that the United States Strategic Command cannot accurately track all satellites, and their current data could be biased, noisy and corrupt.[24][25] He gave formal congressional testimony to the Federal government of the United States in 2017, discussing a Civil Space Traffic Management system.[26] He stated that he believes that the USSC should create a global, accessible, and transparent space traffic management system, which would protect spacecraft from debris and a lack of monitoring.[26]

Jah has served as a member of the delegation at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and chairs the NATO SCI-279-TG activity on Space Domain Awareness.[27] He was appointed as Core Faculty to the University of Texas at Austin Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences in 2018 where he directs the Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies group (CAST).[28][29] He has discussed astrodynamics and space policy on NPR, The BBC and National Geographic.[30][31][32][33][34][35]

At The University of Texas at Austin, Jah is a Distinguished Scholar with the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law.[36] In 2024, Jah was promoted to full professor. Jah's published works include the areas of space situational awareness, space traffic management, spacecraft navigation, space surveillance and tracking, multi-source information fusion, and intersection with space security and safety.[37] He has previously served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems and is currently for the Elsevier Advances in Space Research.[38][39] In 2021, Jah co-founded Privateer Space with Steve Wozniak and Alex Fielding, where he serves as Chief Scientist.[40][41]

Awards, elections and fellowships

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Year Award
2001 NASA Group Achievement Award and Aviation Week & Space Technology Laurel Award "for the superb navigation of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to Mars"[42]
2010 Elected to Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers[43]
2011 Elected to Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics[44]
2013 Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate Technology Transfer/Transition Achievement Award[45]
2014 Elected to Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society[46]
2014 Elected to Fellow of the American Astronautical Society[47]
2015 Elected to Fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety[48]
2015 Elected to Fellow of the Air Force Research Laboratory[49]
2016 University of Colorado Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (DEAA)[50]
2018 Elected as Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics[51]
2019 Selected as TED Fellow[52]
2019 Conferred as Fellow by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics "For thought leadership and innovative technical contributions in the fields of space situational awareness, space traffic management, and astrodynamics."[53]
2019 Selected as one of 25 "People racing to save us" of WIRED25 by the Wired (magazine) "[54]
2020 Selected as a Public Voices Fellow by the Op-Ed Project[55]
2022 MacArthur Fellow[4]
2023 Elected as Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh[56]

References

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  1. ^ Wood, Danielle (7 April 2021). "Media Lab Perspectives: Space Environmentalism with Moriba Jah – MIT Media Lab". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
  2. ^ DeMars, Kyle J.; Bishop, Robert H.; Jah, Moriba K. (July 2013). "Entropy-Based Approach for Uncertainty Propagation of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems". Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. 36 (4): 1047–1057. doi:10.2514/1.58987. ISSN 0731-5090.
  3. ^ "AFRL inducts 2015 Fellows". 28 October 2015.
  4. ^ a b "Moriba Jah". MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
  5. ^ "Meet the 2019 TED Fellows and Senior Fellows". TED Blog. 2019-01-23. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  6. ^ "Moriba Jah (‘99)". alumni.erau.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  7. ^ "2019 Class of TED Fellows Includes Three AAS Members | American Astronomical Society".
  8. ^ "AIAA Announces Its Class of 2019 Fellows and Honorary Fellows". aiaa.org. 2019-02-04. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  9. ^ Witze, Alexandra (2018). "The Quest to Conquer Earth's Space Junk Problem". Nature. 561 (7721): 24–26. Bibcode:2018Natur.561...24W. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-06170-1. PMID 30185967. S2CID 52160253.
  10. ^ "There's an empty trash bag circling our planet". February 2019.
  11. ^ "Tiangong-1 Space Station to Fall This Week". 27 March 2018. Archived from the original on March 28, 2018.
  12. ^ a b c "Space Junk(ie)". Lift Magazine. 2018-03-30. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  13. ^ a b c "Jah, Moriba | CODER". www.coder.umd.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  14. ^ a b c "Moriba Jah | The University of Texas at Austin - Academia.edu". utexas.academia.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  15. ^ a b Jah, Moriba Kemessia (2005). "Mars aerobraking spacecraft state estimation by processing inertial measurement unit data". Ph.D. Thesis. Bibcode:2005PhDT........64J.
  16. ^ mars.nasa.gov. "Moriba Jah". NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  17. ^ a b "Momentum Member Spotlight â€" June 2016 : The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics". www.aiaa.org. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  18. ^ Jah, M.; Madler, R. (2007). "Satellite Characterization: Angles and Light Curve Data Fusion for Spacecraft State and Parameter Estimation". Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference: E49. Bibcode:2007amos.confE..49J.
  19. ^ Posted by Daniel Leuck on August 6, 2009 at 10:30am; Blog, View. "Featured Techie: Astrodynamicist Moriba Jah". www.techhui.com. Retrieved 2019-01-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ a b "Dr. Moriba K. Jah | The Space Show". thespaceshow.com. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  21. ^ "Moriba K. Jah". www.ae.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  22. ^ Deoras, Srishti (2017-05-04). "Interview with Moriba K. Jah, an Astrodynamicist & Space Expert". Analytics India Magazine. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  23. ^ Evans, Steve (2018-11-09). "Watch out, there's a lot of space junk about". Canberra Times. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  24. ^ "Space Surveillance and Tracking: Challenges for Unique Space Object Identification and Space Traffic Management". aoe.vt.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  25. ^ "MWI PODCAST: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THE US MILITARY IN SPACE?". mwi.usma.edu. 31 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  26. ^ a b "Reopening the American Frontier: Promoting Partnerships Between Commercial Space and the U.S. Government to Advance Exploration and Settlement" (PDF). NASA. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
  27. ^ "Moriba Jah". The Strauss Center. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  28. ^ "Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences | University of Texas at Austin". ICES. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  29. ^ "Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies". www.ices.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-28.
  30. ^ "Moriba Jah". Source of the Week. 2018-08-15. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  31. ^ "BBC World Service - Science in Action, Can Science Save the Northern White Rhino?". BBC. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  32. ^ Scott, Elfy (4 November 2018). "Scientists Think They Might Be Able To Solve The Space Junk Problem – By Shooting Lasers At It". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  33. ^ "Get Ready for Artificial Meteor Showers". National Geographic News. 2016-06-14. Archived from the original on June 14, 2016. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  34. ^ Stockton, Nick (2017-07-17). "Ted Cruz Asks Space Capitalists How to Make Orbit Great Again". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  35. ^ "Moriba Jah, 1999 Embry-Riddle Space Grant Intern, featured on NPR Source of the Week! | Arizona Space Grant Consortium". spacegrant.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  36. ^ "Distinguished Scholar". strausscenter.org. Retrieved 2019-01-28.
  37. ^ "Moriba Jah, Ph.D. Publications".
  38. ^ "Moriba K. Jah | Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society". ieee-aess.org. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  39. ^ "Professor Moriba Jah I IWLR2018". www.iwlr2018.serc.org.au. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  40. ^ "Privateer Space". mission.privateer.com. Retrieved 2022-03-24.
  41. ^ "Space tracking startup Privateer hires Jah as chief scientific adviser". SpaceNews. 2021-11-08. Retrieved 2022-03-24.
  42. ^ "Mars Odyssey Recognized with Award".
  43. ^ "IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems members".
  44. ^ "List of AIAA Associate Fellows".
  45. ^ "AFRL salutes award-winning employees". 19 March 2014.
  46. ^ "RAS confirmed Fellows 2014" (PDF).- (Officers Reports: number 8.4, reviewed 2019-10-30)
  47. ^ "American Astronautical Society Fellows".
  48. ^ "IAASS Fellow Member joins UA".
  49. ^ "2015 Air Force Research Laboratory Fellows". 28 October 2015.
  50. ^ "University of Colorado at Boulder Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award". 21 April 2016.
  51. ^ "2018 International Academy of Astronautics Elected Members".
  52. ^ "TED Fellow Profile of Moriba Jah". ted.com. 2019-01-23. Retrieved 2019-02-07.
  53. ^ "AIAA Announces Its Class of 2019 Fellows and Honorary Fellows". aiaa.org. 2019-02-04. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  54. ^ "Stories of People Racing to Save US". Wired. 2019-12-04. Retrieved 2019-12-04.
  55. ^ "Faculty Members Receive Prestigious Public Voices Fellowship". Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost. 2020-02-19. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  56. ^ "LEADING THINKERS AND PRACTITIONERS ELECTED AS RSE FELLOWS". 2023-04-20. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
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