How Satellites Help Put Breakfast On The Table: Caryn Schenewerk (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Professor Caryn Schenewerk’s talk titled “How Satellites Help Put Breakfast On The Table” at TEDxAustinCollege 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Role of Satellites in Solving Earth’s Problems

Picture a distant satellite in a silent vacuum of space. How might that satellite hold keys to some of Earth’s most pressing problems? What might it possibly have to do with what you had for breakfast this morning? Satellites are deeply connected to our everyday lives.

The most obvious example is GPS, but there’s so very much more. Every day, satellites, thousands of them, circle Earth. Some of those satellites are transmitting data about Earth back to Earth. Now, we all know that Earth has some very serious problems, and understandably, some people think that we should be investing in solving those problems, instead of spending money on space.

I’m here to suggest that space-based capabilities are the keys to understanding and mitigating some of Earth’s most pressing problems. I love solving hard problems, and I’ve learned that good solutions are derived from good data. If you can’t properly characterize the problem, you’re unlikely to achieve the most optimal solution.

People who work in aerospace, building rockets, operating satellite systems, they also love hard problems. Well, I’m not a rocket scientist or a satellite operator, I am a member of a small cadre of space policy and law experts. Now, some people think that legally space is the Wild West.

Space Law and Policy

It’s not. There are laws. That said, there are also really interesting questions, legal questions that arise from space activities. That’s initially what led me to work at SpaceX.

The interesting legal questions that come with things like reusable rockets and how do we foster the US commercial space industry.

Today I teach space law. Yes, it is a class. And I advise numerous companies and US government entities. Space-based capabilities are key to understanding some of our hardest problems. But I didn’t understand that when I was an Austin College student.

When I graduated from Austin College, I set a trajectory of my career that was focused on humanitarian issues. I basically wanted to help save the world. Today, I realize that I’m actually not that far off course, because space-based capabilities hold the keys to solving some of Earth’s most pressing problems.

The Importance of Space Exploration

President Kennedy famously said that we go to space because it’s hard. And in doing that, we would bring together some of the brightest minds and we would drive innovation. Today we still go to space and eventually we’ll get back to the moon.

But we do that because going to space is vital to predicting life-threatening weather, fighting food insecurity, managing our limited natural resources, addressing humanitarian crises and maintaining peace and security. We can gather life-saving data from space thanks to scientific and technological innovations in remote sensing.

Now, what is remote sensing? Remote sensing is the science of obtaining information about objects and areas from a distance, typically from satellites or from aircraft. Space-based remote sensing allows us to have a distinct vantage point high above the Earth, where we can take notes about the Earth’s oceans, its land masses, its atmosphere and its inhabitants. We can see and understand what’s happening on a daily basis on our planet.

Remote sensing capabilities come, or remote sensing satellites, I should say, come in a variety of sizes, shapes and types of sensors. Those sensors collect data from Earth in the form of reflected sunlight, emitted heat and bounced back radar signals. Those signals allow us to observe Earth on a daily basis in a variety of ways.

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The Advantages of Satellite Remote Sensing

They also allow us to do that at a scale that’s unachievable through other methods. Sure, we can all go, and we could send people out to scale mountains and to collect data. We can also fly aircraft full of sensors, but aircraft are limited because did you know that in any given moment, 70% of Earth is covered in clouds or darkness?

Operating from space in a variety of orbits, so that means in different distances and inclinations from Earth, satellites capture continuous images and data. Some operate from geostationary orbit, meaning they maintain their position over a fixed point on Earth, constantly observing and collecting data on that one point. Think hurricane-prone regions.

Others circle the Earth in a polar orbit closer to Earth. Those are continuously circling Earth multiple times a day, collecting data that covers the entire globe. Really helpful when we want to see changes over time and distances.

Approximately 2 billion people worldwide rely on snow for their water supply, their agricultural needs and their hydropower. That means that the ability to collect information on snow cover and the amount of water that’s in that snow is actually life-saving information. So with lives on the line, what would you all want to do?

The NASA Landsat Program

Would you want to layer up, limber up, and hike thousands of feet with heavy equipment? Would you prefer to fly an aircraft full of sensors for as long as the weather and the fuel allowed? Or would you want to take advantage of eyes in the sky collecting continuous data, tracking those changes over time and distance?

I want to highlight that by operating from space, you can actually collect that data and use it to validate the data, the very valuable data that you can get from doing that hiking, from the aircraft. So they’re all valuable methods that we need to combine together and we combine those together and we apply analytics to it and that helps us understand and save lives.

The same NASA that sent a person to the moon has been operating the Landsat program, collecting images of Earth for nearly half a century. That satellite system produces images that track land cover and land use changes. Think urban development versus forests, think forest fires, droughts, floods, the things that come with our use of our land.

Each of you using NASA’s Worldview Imagery Tool can layer images, maps, and other information to suit your own purposes. I encourage you to check it out. The data, the images that populate the Worldview Imagery tool, they’re collected from satellites that are continuously flying, and the images are updated on a daily basis.

Weather Prediction and Food Security

Some of them are updated as often as every ten minutes, meaning you can see Earth essentially as it is right now. We can’t talk about timely space-based data without talking about the weather. So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collects data from space to support meteorological predictions.

Okay, I get it. So if satellites are so great, why are our weather predictions not always so, well, accurate? Fair point and an important point, because while we can collect crucial amounts of data from space about Earth, it’s what we do with that data that really matters.

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So if your weather person doesn’t have the analytical tools that they need to decipher that data and practically apply it, then we have nothing. I also don’t need to remind you that there is a connection between weather and our food supply. So let’s think again about that breakfast this morning and what the connection is with satellites.

Our ability to sustainably feed the world’s growing population will benefit from space-based capabilities. It is one of our most pressing problems, our ability to sustainably grow enough food to feed the world’s population and fight food insecurity. In too many places, food security is not a given, it’s constantly at risk.

The Role of Satellites in Humanitarian Aid

And in those places where there’s conflict, extreme weather and economic insecurity, that risk level can quickly turn into a crisis. Space-based capabilities can help humanitarians and agricultural experts identify that risk and direct humanitarian aid in time to mitigate it. That is life-saving technology.

That’s because satellites from space can detect things like soil moisture, land temperature, drought. They can direct fertilizer use. They can help us with pesticide use. They can help us understand what’s happening with our crops and the health of our crops and the distribution of our crops.

NASA has been active in fighting food insecurity through various programs, including NASA Harvest. NASA Harvest is a program that collects information from space to understand crop growth and health. It deploys that information to help farmers figure out how to be judicious in their use of pesticides and fertilizer and water, all with the purpose of helping us have more sustainable agriculture and feed the growing population on our planet.

In addition to the activities of our government, increasing numbers of commercial activities are occurring in space. Those include commercial remote sensing activities.

Commercial Remote Sensing Activities

They contribute to our ability to understand the fact that food insecurity does not know national boundaries. The risks that we identify with weather, with drought, those also don’t recognize national boundaries. So from space we can see the whole picture.

Satellites give us a distinct vantage point from which we can view the whole of Earth and understand the connectivity of the science that we are collecting from space and the tools that we deploy to address it, so we can have more sustainable agriculture so we can feed people and fight off famines.

I’d like to highlight for you a couple of examples of commercial companies that are using space-based data to address food security. It’s interesting because these aren’t flashy companies that are making the news, but they’re companies that are making very specific and exciting contributions to helping us address a very important issue – food sustainability.

The first is SatAgro. SatAgro uses space-based data to help farmers understand and better use fertilizer. Instead of spreading fertilizer over the entire field with SatAgro’s application, they can apply it against the specific areas that need it the most. Of course, that helps the farmer save money. It also protects our environment. It decreases the amount of fertilizer that’s leaching into waterways.

Sustainable Agriculture and Space-Based Data

Another is a company called DryGro. DryGro also uses space-based data. It does that to support sustainable agriculture, specifically focused on feed for livestock. They combine space-based data about weather and soil conditions and other environmental factors to focus their efforts in growing that feed and having a more sustainable result. We can all very much appreciate beautiful views of the universe. For example, this one from the James Webb Telescope.

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But I hope you now see that space exploration isn’t just about looking out into our universe and exploring it. It’s about understanding how we can solve problems right here on our planet. But what does that mean for you?

And what does it mean beyond just collecting that data from space? It means understanding that space-based capabilities like remote sensing are just a tool, a very sophisticated tool, but still just a tool. And like all tools, what we do with it matters.

Investment in Space-Based Capabilities

How do we invest in it? How do we deploy it against the problem, and how do we iterate on its possibilities? It also matters how much information we can gather from space. We need to make sure that we have a number of satellites, we have a full constellation of satellites, I should say, collecting data about a diverse amount of data that we’re making the investments in those space-based capabilities so we can save lives on Earth, that we’re making the investments in how we deploy those and how we have analytical capabilities to understand them, as well as user-friendly applications and interfaces from which we can pull the data and apply it.

Like those two companies are against our most pressing problems. So let’s circle back to your breakfast. When you sit down to breakfast tomorrow, whether it’s a cup of coffee and a donut or something really good and healthy, I want you to think about the role that space may have played in delivering that food to your table.

And I want you to think about how many more people might enjoy breakfast as a result of space-based capabilities. I also want to encourage you to think about the non-engineers who contributed to that capability. The teachers, the science communicators, the analysts, the agricultural policymakers, and even the lawyers. It’s going to take all of us to address Earth’s most pressing problems. And when we want to derive really good solutions, we do need good data.

Conclusion

And so I want to encourage all of you also to think about the earthly challenges that you want to solve, the things that interest you the most, the things that you think about when you think, “I want to go save the planet.” Consider that they might actually be problems that we can best solve by looking to space, which is looking back down on Earth. Because that might be the best way to derive the very data that we need to understand the problem and to come up with the very best solution. Thank you.