Podcast

Chris Bellant is an operations planner for the International Space Station (ISS) by day, but by night, he’s the executive director for the Mars Initiative. Through this nonprofit, he’s able to help humanity get closer to exploring Mars through both grant programs and its Mars Prize Fund. Citing a childhood love for Star Trek, Chris...

Victor Stephanopoli is the COO of MzansiSat, South Africa’s first private prospective satellite operator focusing on telecom. The company focuses on the South African market, and aims to deploy Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites, with the goal providing internet connectivity anywhere inside the country by 2025.  In this episode, Stephanopoli shares his uncommon path to the...

Tom Walkinshaw is the founder and CEO of Alba Orbital, a startup specializing in building pocketqubes — small satellites that only measures 5 cm across. He started the company with prototypes in 2019, and now his satellites are set to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch set for December.  Making satellites smaller and more...

Aravind Ravichandran is a Senior Strategy Consultant at PwC’s space practice, and a self-proclaimed Earth Observation (EO) data aficionado with a passion for blockchain. He sees EO as just another source of data, available and ready to be unlocked. In addition, blockchain technology can be useful when applied to EO data. As a former software...

Naia Butler-Craig is a NASA space technology graduate research fellow and a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, focusing on electric propulsion. She’s not only involved in gateway Artemis projects, but as a self-proclaimed thrill-seeker, aspires to be an astronaut. Beginning at the age of 13, she’s been on a journey to become...

Luc Riesbeck is a space policy research analyst at Astroscale U.S., and wants to make our orbits a safer place.  Riesbeck started their career with an undergraduate degree in international relations, then interned at NASA, and quickly realized their interest in space policy. Now with a masters degree and a space policy internship under their...

Julie Sage is an aspiring astrophysicist, science communicator, and the host of SuperNova Style Science News. At just 16-years-old, she’s been doing some real science with running a variety of different experiments on cubesats, including material testing. But with her age comes obstacles, including issues with funding and a lack of access to materials. Regardless...

What is space medicine? Although the answer can vary, the practice focuses on ways to keep humans in homeostasis while they endure extreme environments. There’s also ways that the space environment can benefit researchers studying diseases.  Dominic Tanzillo is an intern at NASA, a member of SEDS, as well as a mathematics and neuroscience student...

What does “space is for everyone” really mean? Nicole Chase tackles this question in her work. In order to make the space industry accessible for everyone, it’s important to understand what the phrase truly means.  A woman with many titles, Nicole is the director of projects for Students for the Exploration and Development of Space...

With the world around us constantly changing, next-generation space leadership is more important than ever. But, what does it mean? What does it look like?  SEDS Rice Chapter President Ryan Udell gives us an example of next-gen space leadership. An engineering major eager to connect his fellow students with the greater space industry, Ryan has...