Interviewee
Graham Lau, Director of Communications and Marketing at Blue Marble Space, host of the NASA show “Ask an astrobiologist” and communicator of science. Dr. Lau is an expert on how living things affect the environment around them.
Transcript
Graham Lau: I'll start off. I'm an astrobiologist and science communicator. That's how I identify when people ask me what I do. However, I wear a lot of hats when it comes to the different positions that I hold. I am the director of communications and marketing for Blue Marble Space. We are a non-profit organization headquartered in the US, but doing business around the world. Very much focused on the future of our species on sustainability, on space exploration. But the main focus of Blue Marble space as a nonprofit is kind of being an umbrella organization that oversees a lot of initiatives led by scientists who are interested in being entrepreneurs as well.
And so we have an initiative called Green Space. It's an indoor micro green growing farm in Pennsylvania. We have SI worthy, which is a news site where you can read about current research that's going on in the last two years that journalists and scientists take the research and they write about it in a way that's understandable for anyone and, and has no bias added to it. We also have our research institute, which is BM S I s or the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. And so I'm also a research scientist with BMS I s and so for bms I like we are like this international community. We have 72 research scientists, we have over 60 visiting scholars at various levels of their careers every summer. We have the Young Scientist program, which I'm also the director of.
This year we had 66 interns from 16 different nations out of 325 applications from over 40 nations around the world. So it's a very international program for college students and, and those who finished a bachelor's degree to take part in research and work with us. We also have another initiative at Blue Marble Space called SA net, which I take part in sagen net. It started off as the social social action for a grassroots astrobiology network is a very long title. Basically to use the name of Carl Sagen for an astrobiology social network. It's now shifted over the years to being more of a way of providing resources for young people who are interested in careers in astrobiology and becoming astrobiologists. It's also the home of the NASA funded show called As an Astrobiologist.
Elisa Muñoz: I don't know which one of those things I should address or I should take more interest. Wow, thank you so much for sharing. Talking about business, I know that you guys talk a lot about the business of space. So here's my question. Like why should people invest in space science and innovation?
Graham Lau: Yeah, and that's a huge question, right? And there are many answers and there are two that I'll say right away. And one comes from like science and what it means to be human right now. And the other comes from the actual return on investment, the ROI. And so for the first part, I mean the science just for us to explore space is a natural continuation of what we've been doing as a species since we started, you know, using language and writing and, and creating stories and learning more about ourselves. We've wanted to know about our place, you know, whether it be on earth, in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the universe. We want to know where we come from and where we're going. And so space exploration is the natural next step in that process. And it makes me an astrobiologist. It makes me wonder, you know, like life happens to planets. We only have one example so far, but there could be other worlds and there may be many worlds out there where life has happened and, and so is there a biological imperative in the universe for life to not only happen to a planet and then, and then evolve with the planet, but does that life also have an imperative to then go out and populate and seed other planets? And I, personally, think that might be the case.
And so there's a natural drive I think for our species and I think for any intellectual species that develops culture and society and starts to build forward to want to also leave its planet and see itself from space and, and to have a better idea of its place, but also to spread out more. And so I think we are on the path of becoming multi-planetary and by going to space right now, I think it really helps people around the world to realize how much of a part of the bigger picture they are. And so that is like the grand picture, the big investment. However, on the business side of things, there is so much money to be made in space and the business of space and honestly, I mean we see so many companies now coming online and on, I don't like the word new space for the term we've been saying new space for like 20 years now. It's not new anymore, it's actually space.
We're doing space exploration. It's not new. It is space. Yeah, it's just space. You know, we've been doing it for a long time. There's so many companies now, you know, doing all kinds of stuff with satellites and low earth orbit, you know, companies who are now getting invested in the possible upcoming next generation space stations, new space telescopes, new spacecraft. And there's a lot of money to be made in space exploration, you know, from these large constellations of satellites that will bring worldwide internet to everyone to, to having so many cameras now in space looking down at our world, it not just offers us like a really cool picture of the earth from above, but it allows us to monitor our planet, to monitor changes and weather patterns and climate to, to monitor things like floods and landslides and explosions and things like that. I mean there's so much we can watch from space, from satellites and so we are at a really interesting time right now as a species where we are very quickly populating the space around our planet with spacecraft.
There's so much that we get from space. It's not just the investment that we get in business and the return financially. There's so much that we get from material science, biological science, medicine and technology as well.
Elisa Muñoz: What kind of missions are you guys planning on, I don't know, on working on for the next couple of years?
Graham Lau: Yeah, I mean there, there are really cool things happening right now. You know, not only, you know, things going on in solar system missions like the dart redirect we just did and we've shown that like we humans for the first time have altered the trajectory of an object in our solar system. That's incredible.
But we also have missions with life detection currently happening and coming up. So right now for instance, we have perseverance on Mars roving around with its little ingenuity, drone perseverance. Part of its mission is to look for signs of life. It's the first attempt since the Viking landers that really has life detection written into the mission concept. It's also collecting samples that we might end up returning to earth someday soon in a joint venture between, between NASA and isa, they might bring those samples back to earth, which is pretty cool. We might actually find the first signs of the past where even present Martian life in those samples. It's hard to say if life ever happened there. We also, you know, recently a couple of years ago there was this big news about the possibility of a fall beam in the atmosphere of Venus, whether or not that fall be is even there and whether or not it could be related to biology. The really cool thing about that is that it inspired people to want to get more spacecraft back to Venus.
We do have an upcoming mission that's supposed to launch in 2024. It's currently being built right now at JPL. You can actually watch once a week. They do a live stream from the clean room and they're available to answer questions. They have mission scientists come on who will answer questions about this development for this mission called Europa Clipper. This mission will go out to the Jovian system, it will orbit around Jupiter and Europa together and it's going to get really high resolution mapping and imaging of Europa surface. It'll do a lot of really cool spectroscopy for understanding the chemistry of the surface. It will also let us know a little bit more about that ocean, how deep it really is, its extent. And honestly there, there's so many other cool things in the works right now.
New space telescopes that are being developed that may one day get funded and go to space. Of course right now the James Webb Space telescope, we've only seen the very first little bits of data being released. I mean it just started collecting light earlier this year and already we're seeing these incredible images. You know, we're seeing galaxies not just 4 billion light years away, but 13 billion light years away and you know, where we're getting spectra from exoplanet atmospheres already. And so that there's so many cool things right now that are happening or might be happening very soon.
Elisa Muñoz: I wanted to ask you, what would you say are some of the challenges that you, that space research might help, solving?
Graham Lau: Oh man. I mean there's so much that we get from space. You know, it's not just the investment in the people and inspiring people. It's not just the investment that we get in business and the return financially, the money that we can make in space exploration. There's so much that we get from material science, biological science, medicine, technology there. There's so much that comes back to us from space. NASA for many years has produced this, this magazine called NASA Spinoff. And it just gives a small sampling of many of the different products and technologies and, and methodologies and things like that, that, that have come from space exploration over the years. And then, you know, people always like, Oh yeah, we have like the space pen and tang and you know, they, they, they point to some of these early things from space exploration, but there's so much more from development of microprocessors and improved computational technologies. Our cameras, you know, the development of the digital cameras and, and developing better cameras was really about space exploration, developing better cameras for looking at our earth and for looking at other worlds in space. There's so much for, for technology, for, for communications technologies.
We have to communicate with our spacecraft in low earth orbit and around other worlds. And even traveling out of our solar system, like there are so many things that we, we've developed and had to learn and it's really been a humongous payoff for humanity. And honestly, anyone who works in the ram of space, whether it's, you know, the business of space, exploration of space, the science of space, we all hear it from time to time. Someone comes up and they ask us, you know, why do we waste money on space when we have so many problems here on earth? And it's almost like this thing and, and we see it on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and Reddit, like it's all over the internet.
And our politicians talk about it as though somehow if you invest in space, you have to give up on the earth. And that's so absurd to me because almost everyone I've ever met who's really invested in space exploration is also really invested in the earth. A lot of companies, private companies that have invested in space exploration have done remarkable things for our planet, you know, and nasa, Isa, jsa, Israel, there are so many governmental space agencies that are putting money, real money not just into space and building spacecraft, but into better helping people here on earth.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for any future entrepreneurs starting on this space path?
Graham Lau: I think when it comes to anything, not just for those who want to get involved in the business of space or engineering related to space exploration or like myself, the science that's related to space exploration, and this is the case, I i I give this kind of advice for everybody when I, when I give talks about how to be an astrobiologist and how to be involved in space. Yeah, it's that you have to be a generalist as well as a specialist. So for all of us, we have to specialize in something that makes us unique, that gives us, as David Perel would say, a personal monopoly. It makes us unique and gives us our own space, but it's also how others recognize us online. You know, some of us as micro-influencers or influencers in social media space are usually known for liking at least one unique thing that makes them kind of their own special thing. And when it comes to science and engineering, you know, you can really specialize in a very specific discipline where you become the world's expert in one single thing.
But we also need more generalists in the world. We need people who have a liberal arts style background and, and there's a reason for that, you know, and, and it's because it gives us clarity and it gives us connectivity in understanding our place in the bigger picture.
So one of my favorite episodes from an old show called Star Trek, The Next Generation, which I grew up on, The Next Gen, I love that show for Star Trek fans out there, you probably know it very well. It's the show where Patrick Stewart played Captain Picard. And, there's one episode called Samaritan Snare from the second season of this show where the captain of this Starship is with a young man named Wesley Crusher. They're inside of a small shuttle together, a small spacecraft and they're, they're traveling together through space. And during one of their conversations on this shuttle, the captain asked the young man if he read a book that he had given him. And the young man says, you know, no, I, I don't think, you know, and I think it was a book of poetry, I can't quite recall, but he's like, This won't be on my exams. And the captain says, you know, most of the important things won't be. And he says, you know, anyone can be taught the mechanics of how to pilot a Starship, but you know, you have to have more than if you invest in things like philosophy and art, history and culture, then it kind of makes everything else make sense. And I think we need that as a species. We need people who aren't just specialized in a single area, but who have a vested interest in, in everything and, and can really kind of relate to the human journey of it all.
Elisa Muñoz: Thank you so much for being here, for sharing your experiences Graham. It was great!
Graham Lau: Thank you. It was.
