By 
October 2nd, 2019
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) project is building a global community to spotlight the capabilities for human interstellar travel beyond our solar system within the next ten decades.
An independent, non-governmental, long-term initiative, 100YSS was started in 2012 with seed-funding through a competitive grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to foster the type of explosive innovation and technology and social advances born from addressing such an audacious challenge.
Former astronaut, Mae Jemison, is the Principal for the 100 Year Starship Project. A physician, engineer, educator and entrepreneur, she served as a mission specialist for the STS-47 mission that flew in September 1992. Jemison was the first woman of color to orbit the Earth.
Mae Jemison aboard STS-47 mission that flew in September 1992. Jemison was the first woman of color to orbit the Earth.
Credit: NASA
Jemison provided a keynote address during the 2019 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium, held here September 24-26th.
Best path forward
An initiative Jemison highlighted was “LOOK UP” – an effort to connect people worldwide, from all walks of life, to share what they see and their thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams and ideas for best path forward.
Events are held every year focused around dates that have significance in terms of the sky and the greater Universe.
Already held this year: “Look Up Apollo: Footprints on the Moon, Pathways on Earth” celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing. Also held was an event for this year’s “Yuri’s Night” to celebrate the former Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin’s space voyage – the first human to orbit the Earth in April 1961.
Capture, create, express, share and explore
Ever wonder what people in far off places are seeing at the same time you’re looking up at the sky?
“We started to look at what could we do with space and started to think about the whole idea of looking up,” Jemison told the symposium attendees. “Just look up. Remember when you were a little kid and looked up at the sky…and the feeling you got inside?”
Jemison noted that the Skyfie app is made exactly for that. The impact of looking up at the sky can be as profound as seeing the Earth from space orbit…particularly when it is a shared global experience. The Skyfie app is available for free on Google Play and the App Store.
The Skyfie app can capture, create, express, share and explore what participants see and feel when looking at the sky. The Skyfie app lets you easily, on a single page, generate your message to the world as a photo, video, audio recording or text and then upload it to an interactive globe of the Earth.
Mae Jemison: “The whole ability to look up from down here is as important as looking down from up there.”
Credit: Leonard David/Inside Outer Space
Sky tapestry
Furthermore, Jemison said, you can seamlessly, explore what everyone submitted across planet Earth on the Sky Tapestry – a fully interactive digital globe that shows Skyfies content from individuals worldwide in near real-time.
The Sky Tapestry renders the Skyfies on a satellite topographical map that can be zoomed to neighborhood resolution. However, your identity and specific location are not revealed.
Jemison said she has long been taken by the fact that by simply looking up, that view is tremendously significant.
“I was struck by how we are connected with each other. And the whole ability to look up from down here is as important as looking down from up there. Because it connects us with the Universe,” Jeminson said. “We’ve got to get people connected some kind of way.”
Resources
For more information on the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) project, go to:
Also, go to: www.lookuponesky.org
As well as:
Posted in Space News
