Feminist Astropolitics with Parvathy Prem

As told to Kirthi Jayakumar

Parvathy Prem is a planetary scientist. In her research, she uses basic physical principles and a variety of computational methods to investigate strange environments across the solar system, and the stories they have to tell. Most of her work so far has focused on the Moon, but she is broadly interested in solar system worlds with very thin atmospheres – from the Moon to Mercury to asteroids and outer solar system satellites.

Parvathy is pictured before a backdrop presenting an artistic rendition of Full panorama (M1432398306LR) showing the context of the Malapert Massif candidate landing region (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University). (Photo credits: Parvathy Prem - Profile picture | Kirthi Jayakumar - Astronomical Art)

Can you start by sharing your background and what got you interested in the field of planetary science?

I was born in Kerala, India and grew up mostly in India, partly in England. Growing up in India, the only two career choices that I knew of were to either become a doctor or an engineer. I knew I didn't want to become a doctor, and did genuinely like physics and maths, so I decided to become an engineer. I did my undergraduate studies in aerospace engineering in Singapore and came to the US in 2010 for my PhD. The main reason I wanted to do a PhD was because I wanted to be a university professor and to do so, you had to have a PhD. When I started my PhD, I discovered the field of planetary science. My PhD advisors were both professors in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin. When I was applying to PhD programs, water had just been discovered near the South Pole of the Moon. Scientists had suspected that lunar polar water existed for decades, but 2010 was when this was definitively confirmed. My advisors had just received funding for a proposal to support a student in doing research to try and understand where that water came from. I came along at just that time and thought that sounded interesting, so I started working on this project. Planetary science is an inherently interdisciplinary field. There are people who come into planetary science from engineering, like myself, people with physics and astronomy backgrounds, and a host of other pathways. In the process of learning more about about the context of my research, and attending conferences, I realized that this was a career path that although I hadn't considered before, combined a lot of things I really liked. On a day-to-day basis, I spend most of my time in front of my computer writing and running code, and looking at the results, which is something that I genuinely enjoy doing. There is physics, maths, computer programming involved, but also storytelling and problem solving. And so, this seemed like something I could make career out of. When I finished my PhD, I began applying for research positions in planetary science and ended up where I am now!

There is an understanding that outer space is considered the common heritage of humankind - however, reality suggests otherwise in terms of accessibility. How far is this a function of the lack of diversity in the field in itself?

I think the lack of diversity has something to do with it, but I think it also has to do with the history and structure of how we've engaged with space. I say “we”, but I think more specifically, this concerns aspects of how the “developed world” has engaged with space, and later, even the “developing world.” The industrialized world has created certain systems of spacefaring. You can add diversity into the mix and stir, but that doesn't necessarily change the underlying attitudes or objectives of those systems. For instance, many space programs, such as those of the United States and Russia, and some other countries, have grown out of conflict. The way the enterprise of space is structured, how people collaborate, what they set out to do, and why, are all rooted in this historical context. When you have a lack of diversity, it definitely creates an environment in which people question these things less, partly because if you set up systems for a certain purpose, you sometimes end up populating those systems with people who think alike. I think diversity helps, but I am also often conscious of the fact that you can have a system filled with diverse people, but unless you question and examine the underlying values of that system, things do not always change.

Exploration produces its own impact on the space environment - an area that is not talked about much outside of domains of expertise. Can you share a bit more about what these impacts and what your research has showed you?

When thinking about the space environment, I think it is important to recognize that this also includes the environment of Earth. This is something I don’t study, but definitely think about. Just like any other industrial process, the process of building spacecraft and launching them has an impact, even on our own planet. Part of my work focuses on trying to understand the environmental impact of human systems on the environments of other planets. One of the things I've always found to be endlessly fascinating about planetary science is that there are so many different kinds of environments out there. We have a beautiful one here. I've heard some people say that there's no environment in space, and they usually have a very specific thing in mind when they say that. But a good starting point is to recognize that every place in the solar system has its own environment, and processes that shape it. Whenever humans visit those other worlds, we interact with their environments. That's the big picture behind some of my recent work, which has focused on developing computer models to understand how the exhaust gases released by a spacecraft landing on the Moon can propagate through the lunar environment; how long those anthropogenic gases reside in the lunar environment, how they move and where they end up, and whether there are temporary or permanent changes in the lunar environment as a result.

I've also been involved in other projects as a sidekick to colleagues who know more about some topics! For instance, I recently collaborated on a paper with Aparna Venkatesan, James Lowenthal, and Monica Vidaurri that looked at the impact of satellite constellations in orbital space. We drew parallels between what's happening in orbital space above Earth and what could happen in the future on other worlds, including potentially on the Moon. For a very long time, it was unthinkable that anything humans could do could affect something as vast as space. These places can seem vast and empty and timeless, and it might feel like nothing we could do could ever affect them. But we've seen from the overcrowding of the space around Earth that that that's not true, and the surface of the Moon is even more bounded. The Moon has an environment that is, in some ways, more resilient than ours, but in some ways more fragile. In my work, I build computer models, which aren't necessarily reality. They function like predictive tools. In the process of building virtual environments in which we can explore some of these question of environmental impact, you realize that there's a lot that we don't understand well – such as how the gases released from a spacecraft interact with the with the lunar regolith (the blanket of dust and rock that covers the surface of the Moon). These are really interesting questions to investigate, and it is worth trying to understand these things now instead of waiting until a point where environmental changes become obvious and irreversible.

How can humankind be more ethical in its engagement with outer space?

One caveat here is that space ethics is a whole field of study with a rich literature of its own. I do think about the ethics of space exploration, but I'm not a space ethicist by training. That doesn't mean one can't think about the ethics of space, but there's a lot of literature out there and some of my own perspectives may be shaped by literature I haven't read and don't have the citations for! In terms of how we can be more ethical in engaging with space, I think we should start by recognizing that this is something worth talking and thinking about. Space can seem very remote and very technical. But it is also something that every one of us is deeply connected to in some sense. A key part of an ethical engagement with space is recognizing that science and technology are not apolitical asking questions that a lot of scientists and engineers aren't trained to do and so we don't always naturally do. I think it also means being genuinely willing to do things differently, even if that means going slowly. This is important because space exploration tends to be funded by national governments and now increasingly by private actors. Both actors have a motivation to do things quickly and efficiently. This sometimes means that questions around what is right and what is good get pushed to the back-burner. The American ecologist Aldo Leopold said that “we can only be ethical in relation to something we can see, understand, feel, love, or otherwise have faith in”. Space often feels remote. It is hard to engage with something remote, as opposed to engaging with something you are connected to. I would like to see a world in which people feel deeply connected to the universe. If we see space as remote and dead, I don't think we'll ever really be able to act ethically in relation to it.

Space has been seen and celebrated as an ancestral global commons - and yet we see whispers of colonization and extractivism take root. How can we decolonize our engagements with space?

We sometimes talk about space in rather abstract terms, but there are many people who make the very apt point that decolonizing space starts on Earth. It starts with things like making sure that people working in space exploration have labor rights, and recognizing land rights. If you look at launch sites, where rockets are launched from, many sites tend to be in countries or locations that have been colonized and on land that that has been taken without consent from the people who lived there. Decolonizing space also involves recognizing environmental rights on Earth, because places don't just belong to people, they belong to ecosystems. If we look at how the business of space exploration proceeds on Earth, there are aspects of it that can be decolonized in a very non-abstract sense. A colleague of mine, Dr. Natalie Treviño, describes very clearly the difference between colonization and coloniality. When we talk about decolonizing space, a somewhat superficial question is often, “How can you colonize space if there's nothing there?” It is not true that there's nothing there, but another common question is, “How can you colonize space if there are no people there?” Some of the obvious brutalities of colonization on Earth don't have a direct parallel on other words, but I think what Natalie clarified for me was that colonization comes from coloniality, which is the way of seeing places and people as extractable, as a means to an end rather than having value in and of themselves. Overturning coloniality is easier said than put into practice, but I think like that's where it starts.

For generations, outer space has been a source of knowledge, wisdom, and succour for indigenous communities world over. Their way of accessing space has had little to do with technology. Do you believe a spacefaring future that would allow both sides to coexist is possible? What might it take for us to get there?

I'm glad you brought up the point that spacefaring is something civilizations have been doing for a lot longer than they've been launching rockets. I think that the first spacefaring expeditions involved civilizations that set out across the great oceans with no visible shore in sight, and only their wits and a canoe to keep them alive. I think there is a lot of wisdom to be gained from communities that have been engaged in a different sort of spacefaring for thousands of years. One really rich source of knowledge for me has been the Indigenous Education Institute, which hosts a great virtual seminar series on Indigenous perspectives on earth, water and sky. There is a lot of foundational knowledge there, and I don’t think it is possible to think seriously about futuristic ways of living in space without learning from communities that have lived with places on Earth for thousands of years. Rather than different cultures or people coexisting, coexistence may have more to do with two streams of motivation coexisting. I think in everything that human beings do, there's a tension between understanding something and controlling it. People are motivated by a desire to do both. I don't know where the future will take us, but the balance between those impulses to understand and to control can give rise to different visions of the future that may seem particularly bleak or particularly inspiring. These impulses exist in everyone and every culture. Maybe it is inevitable that we'll go through phases where things may seem a little imbalanced, but maybe it is also inevitable that we will find some kind of balance in the long run. The future is not a static place, and it is up to us how we balance our tensions.

This interview was supported by the Maypole Fund.