Reports
2023 – 2024 Year in Review
As we reflect on the past fiscal year, we celebrate our growth and honor our collaborators. This year, we expanded our learning offerings to serve middle and high school students, teachers, and aerospace professionals. Our dedication to interdisciplinary teaming resulted in 13 pilot projects. The launch of the ASU Space Collective marked a significant milestone, integrating nine commercial companies into both the ASU Space ecosystem and Arizona economy. Our second annual Arizona Space Summit, in collaboration with NAU, UofA, ACA, GPEC and ATC, gathered 150 leaders to elevate Arizona as a premier hub for the commercial space sector. Additionally, the introduction of Space-Edge, a multi-university accelerator, is propelling businesses into the new space economy.
2021 – 2022 Year in Review
This year, we launched a partnership with Blue Origin and Sierra Space to build Orbital Reef, a low-Earth orbit space station set to launch by the end of this decade. The student lifeguards in our Interplanetary Laboratory ran several projects from developing a sensor for the NASA mission ExoCam to CubeSat testing a novel laser communications method for the DORA mission. Our Technological Leadership program graduated its first two students. We also announced funding for eight new and returning pilot projects.
2020 – 2021 Year in Review
Despite the challenges of this year, the Interplanetary Initiative team has forged forward. In the middle of COVID, we assembled a fantastic Advisory Board and in the spring, Jessica Rousset joined us as deputy director, and Katherine McConachie joined us as director of learning. Part of our work has been an in-depth strategy, vision, and mission process. We announced the launch of OpenCitizen, our team-based problem-solving program for learners anywhere in the world, and we announced a new partnership with XPRIZE. We are ramping up our efforts to create networks of collaboration that drive a positive, inclusive, sustainable space exploration and habitation future. Onward, and so glad to be on this voyage together
2019 – 2020 Year in Review
Our years of innovation in how to teach teamwork and problem-solving in online formats became urgently relevant with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we immediately leveraged it for use in classes that had to move into virtual format with only one week’s notice. We created a new, interdisciplinary team-building research process, built and opened an innovative three-year, workforce facing Bachelor of Science in Technological Leadership, and seed-funded around twenty interdisciplinary projects. Our space hardware build-and-test lab opened, dedicated to projects with outside partners. We invite everyone to join our experiments to build positive space futures.