A Study of Launch Infrastructure and Sociotechnical Relations of Adjacency, Diversity, and Cosmology

This project explores the relationship between commercial satellite launching and underrepresented minority communities. The study investigates how intensified commercial satellite launching is impacting local Indigenous groups, farmworkers, and incarcerated persons who live and work nearby. In the process, the project explores relations between aerospace, agriculture, and prison sectors in the community, local public education and workforce development, and environmental and public health effects of launch noise and emissions. The project’s significance is grounded in its integration of diverse community perspectives in understanding and evaluating the local effects of satellite launching. The study supports public knowledge of federally subsidized launch infrastructure and satellite technologies and provides collaborative research and educational opportunities for community members and university students. Reports, graphics, and publications from the study will be publicly available on the project website. Leveraging partnerships with community organizations, the study uses ethnographic methods to conduct focus groups, interviews, and correspondence programs that convey how minority communities think about and perceive increasing satellite launches in their midst. The major goals of the project are to: 1) understand how satellite launching impacts both the local community and the global satellite industry; 2) investigate the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of commercial satellite launching; 3) learn how members of minority communities think about the base, satellite launching, aerospace, and STEM education; and 4) draw on qualitative data to theorize how sociotechnical relations of adjacency, diversity, and cosmology alter understandings of launch infrastructure and satellite technology. The study will contribute to research on satellite technology and infrastructure, the aerospace sector, and population demographics and technology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.