Public Forum on Space Mining: Promises and Consequences

Mar 11, 2020

Join us for an open forum on space resource extraction (space mining) featuring Sara Russell, an expert in astromaterials at the Natural History Museum, London. Russell will discuss the scientific and economic benefits of extracting resources from celestial bodies and the conditions under which their return to Earth is viable. 

She will be joined by a panel of experts from a range of disciplines, including Jeremy Hansen (astronaut, CSA), Tanja Masson (Space Law, University of Leiden and the Hague Working Group on Space Resources), Melissa Rice (Western Mars Lab, WWU), and multiple UBC faculty members, that will further discuss the legal, industrial, and ethical complexities of space resource extraction. 

Sara Russell is a Merit Researcher in Cosmic Mineralogy and planetary sciences. Her research interests are in the formation of the Solar System and the evolution of the Earth’s Moon. Russell’s group currently works on topics such as the origin of water in the Solar System and geological processes in asteroids. She is a Science Team member of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, an Editor of CUP’s Chondrules book, and proud namesake of Asteroid Sararussell.

Event is free to attend, but please RSVP.

This public event is part of the International Research Roundtable Sustainable Development of Space organized by 2016 Wall Scholar Aaron Boley, Physics and Astronomy and Michael Byers, Political Science. As a Wall Scholar, Boley received PWIAS funding to hold a small symposium to analyze space resource extraction from a joint legal and scientific perspective. Thereafter, The Outer Space Institute was co-founded by Aaron Boley, Michael Byers and David Kendall.

Sponsored by the Outer Space Institute, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and Green College.

Presenters

Associated Programs