Moriba Jah is paving the way for sustainable space exploration

On a cold night shift at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, when National Geographic Explorer Dr. Moriba Jah was a missile security officer guarding nukes, he looked up at the night sky. It was the first time he saw it from this point of view, clear from visual occlusions. From here, it was as dark as a lake. 

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is kind of like what my ancestors saw during their lifetimes. It was a spiritual moment,’” Jah recalls, marveling at the visibility of the stars. Except some spots of light weren’t stars, and they weren’t planes. The night was clear enough to see satellites traversing the infinite blackness. “That was mesmerizing to me. I could see human-made objects from the ground. That’s what got me into astrodynamics.”

Of human-made objects in space right now around 90% are useless. As a space environmentalist and astrodynamicist, Jah is working on transparent and collaborative solutions to the accumulation of garbage in the skies—a problem growing more quickly than ever since the late ’90s, with the boom in commercial space exploration launching rockets more often and less regulated than ever. 

Satellites go up, die in space, and stay there for a long time. They become hazardous junk that threatens to smash into other objects, generating more debris. And at thousands of miles an hour, even something as small as a paint chip could cause significant damage. 

Jah has been working on sounding the alarm. Guided by Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)—and a series of thematic epiphanies—he’s forging a new path for sustainable space exploration.

“We depend on these robots in the sky to provide us with critical services: position navigation, timing communications,” Jah highlights, “but nothing is protecting these satellites from getting shwacked by a piece of junk.” Like the defunct Russian satellite that smashed into an operational U.S. satellite and disintegrated into a cloud of debris. The International Space Station (ISS) has to regularly perform maneuvers to avoid collisions that could be catastrophic, or at the least, create more trash. Just this March, a loose piece of the ISS fell through the roof of a Florida home.

“I’ve been saying for many years now that people will eventually die as a result of reentries,” Jah writes in a LinkedIn post commenting on the news. “It is statistics and probabilities, and the human population will eventually lose.” Though no one has been killed by space debris reentry, NASA estimates one piece of junk returns to Earth every day.

Unsustainable exploration practices have beckoned Jah to lead that charge in a paradigm shift for society’s attitude toward the environment, including space. Humans need to feel a connection to the sky. 

“Space environmentalism is recognizing space as another one of Gaia, Mother Earth’s ecosystems. It is a finite resource in need of protection.” 

Serenity in the skies

Having studied Eastern philosophies and meditation, and practicing intentional moments of connection to Gaia today, Jah’s perspective is highly spiritual. 

“I realize that I’ve been guided my whole life.”

It was during a visit to Alaska to explore his son Denali’s namesake that Jah felt called to become a celestial steward. He had just finished working at The Air Force Research Lab on Maui.

“I was asked by this energy if I would be willing to do everything possible to prevent humanity from forgetting its intergenerational contract of stewardship,” he recalls. In Alaska, he witnessed an Indigenous approach to conservation. He decided to put ancient TEK at the helm of his space sustainability efforts. 

In 2022 Jah mapped the human-made objects in Earth’s orbit. 

Wayfinder is the most comprehensive satellite and space junk tracker application available to the public. The technology was launched by Privateer, a data intelligence platform powering the future of space and sustainability, co-founded by space veteran Alex Fielding, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Jah, who is also the company’s chief scientist. Wayfinder visualizes data from multiple sources, from the Department of Defense to Russian databases and amateur astronomer inputs. Maui-based Privateer has its mission rooted in honoring and integrating centuries-long environmental stewardship exercised by the Indigenous people of Hawai’i—starting with recognizing the interconnectedness of all living things.

Right now, more than 10,000 active satellites are orbiting the Earth. Private companies are launching as many as 60 new satellites a week, mostly internet providers. 

Until orbital clutter can be cleared, astronomers have to navigate glares, or glints, which happen more frequently with more highly reflective objects accumulating in the sky. Astronomers could confuse a glint for an asteroid, and stargazing communities can misinterpret cosmic cues. 

To get around the problem, Jah led the development of technology that is helping astronomers predict when light pollution could affect the view of space from the ground. With support from the National Geographic Society he implemented the software, called Glint Evader, on Privateer’s platform last year.  

“That’s the engineering in me,” Jah says, "somebody trying to find solutions.”

Glint Evader is the latest piece of Jah’s effort with Privateer to empower the future of space sustainability. The program has been available for a couple of months in its beta version. Jah is already working on the second phase. 

When the 1986 Challenger tragedy struck, Jah watched it play out on his television. He was moved by the horrible accident, and mesmerized by space. He continued to develop an attachment to the cosmos over time. His conviction to care for space as another environment makes sense, considering the number of times he describes space has taken care of him.

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From a young age, he turned to the night sky when circumstances were challenging. His earliest memory was in high school.

“They’d have me do something called the traveler’s serenade. We had this drill pad, a large patio, and they’d stand me at attention from 9 p.m. until five in the morning straight,” Jah recalls. It was a hazing practice inflicted by his classmates at his military boarding school in Venezuela.

“I was in a space of rock bottom. And I’d see the travel of the stars. Somehow in this void, I came in contact with, let’s say whatever created the universe. What washed over me was infinite love and compassion,” he says. And despite having “a lot of reasons to be angry, I decided I would find a way to use my healing in service of other people.” 

Maybe he’d help find the cure for AIDS. He considered it at the time. The dream aligned with his love for biology, but instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces for four years, where the overnight shift introduced him to satellites and veered his attention toward aerospace engineering. Later, he picked up a 16-hour overnight stint as an apartment security guard in Florida, after struggling to find employment once he left the Air Force. It enabled him to pay off debts, but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet. “For months I ate out of a dumpster.”

“I thought, space is for somebody else because I’m not smart enough to ever be involved.” 

Jah is a recipient of the “Genius Grant,” a nickname for the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. He was recently promoted to full professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he arrived after working at the Air Force Research Laboratory, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab as a Spacecraft Navigator on missions to Mars. Jah is a fellow of multiple international organizations and has served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Last year, through an extremely rigorous process, he was named one of eight people elected as an international member to Scotland’s national academy of science and letters, the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Humans act, the environment responds

An estimated 170 million pieces of space debris are in Earth’s orbit, around 35,000 of which are large enough to be tracked. 

“The best solution unfortunately is to bring it back and have it burn up in the atmosphere,” Jah highlights, but it pollutes the atmosphere in the process. 

In February, a school bus-sized deceased European weather satellite, which spent around 16 years working and over a decade floating inoperable, fell into a fiery reentry. Per predictions, it crashed into the ocean.

In 2007, NASA made the call to release a depleted ammonia reservoir from the ISS, nudging the tank back down to Earth after determining there were no other viable disposal options. Once it was tossed overboard, it took more than a year to enter the atmosphere where it burned up before landing.

For now, space cleanup mechanisms are challenging on multiple fronts, “and there’s no money in it,” Jah adds. The problem is layered, but he’s determined to explore all avenues that could lead to positive change.

“The U.N., treaties and conventions that describe liability and damage limit damage to physical harm. I’m trying to extend that definition to be environmental, operational and economic harm.” 

The goal is a circular space economy. Jah outlines the vision in this charter, which presents solutions to unsustainable space practices through behavior changes like satellite reuse, recycling and responsible disposal, in addition to ideas around orbital safety in space exploration. Humans must also be attuned to the way space is responding to their presence.  

“Avoid decisions that outpace the environment’s ability to provide feedback on unintended consequences,” reads Article 1, Section 2.

Implementation has to be attractive. “If I’m going to enroll humanity, it can’t happen without arts and entertainment.” Jah is opening himself up to being a television presence, an author and a musical collaborator. Whatever it takes to get the point across. He founded Moriba Jah Universal LLC to help space environmentalism practices go mainstream. 

Despite working in the eye of a growing problem in the skies, Jah is optimistic about the way forward. “Gaia, Mother Nature, is very resilient. We can see evidence of that,” he says.

“Whenever humans explore, they tend to do it to the detriment of the environment,” Jah recognizes. And though “we’re repeating a similar pattern in space. We don’t have to.”

ABOUT THE WRITER
For the National Geographic Society: Natalie Hutchison is a Digital Content Producer for the Society. She believes authentic storytelling wields power to connect people over the shared human experience. In her free time she turns to her paintbrush to create visual snapshots she hopes will inspire hope and empathy.