Year in review
Our Journey
In our Year In Review publications, we look back on a year of activity engaging people, projects, and conversations that are forging our space future. We also glimpse at the opportunities that lie ahead.
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.
2018 – 2019 Year in Review
This year we launched and funded about a dozen research pilot projects to test our concept and process of asking Big Questions to drive knowledge forward via interdisciplinary teams. We held our first annual Interplanetary Initiative convening uniting great minds to create our future in space. We are more excited than ever about the Interplanetary Initiative and welcome everyone to join us on this journey as we grow and evolve our mission of advancing society through exploration.