Saturday, September 5, 2020 – Monthly Meeting – 2 PM US Central – ONLINE – Featured Speaker: Moriba Jah – Astrodynamicist – UT Austin

Join us for our Monthly NSS North Houston Space Society (http://NorthHoustonSpace.org) meeting. Come join others who are excited about exploring the cosmos, learning how to use the resources of space to improve human life, and who want to go and spread humanity to the rest of the universe.

The meeting will be on Saturday, September 5, 2020 at 2PM (CDT) ONLINE Via ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85216600533

Tentative Agenda:
2:00 PM – Opening Remarks – Nathan Price
2:05 PM – High School Aerospace Scholars Program – Sashreek Bhagavatula
2:25 PM – Recent Space News – Greg Stanley
2:45 PM – “Monitoring, Quantifying, and Assessing the Near-Earth Anthropogenic Space Object Population: The Foundation to Space Traffic Management” – Moriba Jah – Astrodynamicist – UT Austin
3:15 PM – Q&A
3:30 PM – Space Communicator Speech
3:45 PM -Share your personal space experiences since the last meeting. Rocket Launches, Other Meetings, Research, etc.
4:00 PM – End of Meeting

About Sashreek Bhagavatula

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Sashreek will be talking about his experience in the High School Aerospace Scholars Program. He participated in this program the summer before his senior year of high school. It is a great experience for those interested in the STEM career field and gives you great insight into the various project NASA works on.

Sashreek is a senior at Texas A&M University studying Computer Engineering. His interests lie in Software Engineering, Data Science, and Entrepreneurship. Sashreek previously worked at State Street Corporation as a Software Engineer and Chevron as a Data Engineer. Sashreek also serves as the Director of Technology for the non-profit organization PEAC (Promoting Education Across the Country). Outside of his academic life, Sashreek plays tennis, loves learning about space and innovative technologies, and enjoys reading comics.

About Moriba Jah

Dr. Moriba Jah joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics in 2017. His research interests are in non-gravitational astrodynamics and advanced/non-linear multi-sensor/object tracking, prediction, and information fusion. His expertise is in space object detection, tracking, identification, and characterization, as well as spacecraft navigation.

He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Arizona, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder specializing in astrodynamics and statistical orbit determination.

Prior to being at UT Austin, Dr. Jah was the Director of the University of Arizona’s Space Object Behavioral Sciences with applications to Space Domain Awareness, Space Protection, Space Traffic Monitoring, and Space Debris research to name a few. Preceding that, Dr. Jah was the lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Advanced Sciences and Technology Research Institute for Astronautics (ASTRIA) and a Principal Investigator for Detect/Track/Id/Characterize Program at AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate.

Before joining AFRL in 2007, he was a spacecraft navigator for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, serving on Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express (joint mission with ESA), Mars Exploration Rovers, Hayabusa (joint mission with JAXA), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Dr. Jah is a member of the Astrodynamics Technical Committee of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and a permanent member of the Space Debris Technical Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He is a Fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), the AFRL, the AAS and the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), as well as an AIAA Associate Fellow, IEEE Senior Member, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronics Systems, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, and Elsevier Information Fusion Journal.

Dr. Jah is a world-recognized subject matter expert in astrodynamics-based Space Domain Awareness sciences and technologies with 75+ publications in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and symposia. He’s been an invited lecturer and keynote speaker at 20+ national and international space events, workshops and fora.

SUMMARY of Saturday, August 1, 2020 – Monthly Meeting – Jennifer Lopez (Astrobotic)


All of life that we know, all of civilization, everything has only been on the earth. We know by looking at other stars that our sun (in a billion or 2 billion years) will heat up and expand ending all life on the earth. And if that is as far as we have gone, then that is the end of the line for us.

But it does not have to be, we can expand beyond earth. We can use the resources in the rest of the solar system to develop our space resources further. We can learn how to travel to other stars. These problems seem impossible to solve, but consider how far we have come. Consider how far we could go.

This is the vision of the National Space Society (NSS). We want to see people living in communities beyond the earth. And we want to use the vast resources of space of the dramatic benefit of humanity (all of humanity).

North Houston Space Society is a chapter of the NSS. We seek to educate ourselves and our community about all the events that are happening in space, the potential that space offers to humanity, and ways that we can work to realize that benefit.

We do this by having monthly meetings where we get updates on recent space news, invite speakers from industry, and work to expand the vision and reach of humanity.

We also work to develop our ability to communicate the benefits and challenges of space through programs like the Space Communicators program. This involves giving three short speeches. Each in one of these categories.

Brynlee Wright gave her first speech today. Starting with her personal space speech.


Greg Stanley then gave us an update on recent space news, focusing on the recent Mars missions.

Then we had Jennifer W. Lopez from Astrobotic talk about the work that her company is doing to open up access to the lunar surface.