BLUE MARBLE SPACE

We are cultivating an organizational culture that elevates public outreach by scientists, whereby public outreach is seen as a positive attribute to the practicing scientist. From the overview perspective obtained from viewing the Earth from space, and through rigorous Earth and space exploration efforts, we aim to bring together a unique and diverse community of scientists from around the world who are passionate about public outreach. Our organization aims to provide administrative support to incubate outreach efforts, allowing our scientists to more easily focus on reaching out to the general public rather than worrying about handling funds and corresponding paperwork. We actively cultivate our organizational values to the participants of our Young Scientist Program and empower them to be accomplished communicators of science.

More than being an Earth and space exploration research institute, we aim to improve the sustainability of planetary resources for the long-term benefit of humans. As a result, humanity must become planetary custodians. We are developing indoor agriculture initiatives in collaboration with local communities and schools to optimize methods for the dual purposes of sustainability and food safety. Planetary custody implies humanity will become a multi-planetary species, and so we are actively developing new ideas to enable the long-term presence of humans in space.

Our strategy involves creating a full-fledged research institute registered with the US government to manage grants from NASA, NSF, and NIH. Our Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, which is actively managing federal grants, is a result of this strategy. Scientists attracted to our values can join our institute and if they so desire, submit grants to these government agencies. We provide our scientists highly-competitive grant management fees.

Our scientists can incubate and lead an array of ideas on public outreach, sustainability or policy. As a result, Blue Marble Space manages a number of such “initiatives” that are individually branded to maximize credit to the people behind them rather than the organization. Behind the scenes of these initiatives, our organization administratively centralizes the management processes to lower the costs of running these efforts. To further reduce “overhead” costs, we operate as a virtual institute relying on conferencing tools and a robust IT infrastructure for day-to-day operations.

Our “Young Scientist Program” is our strategy for focusing our efforts on empowering the next generation of scientists. Participants are mentored not only in the sciences, but also provided opportunities to participate in effective communication workshops to prepare them for outreach experiences, and ethics training.

Blue Marble Space rigorously selects diverse scientists & staff who are not only experts in their fields, but also committed to public outreach and passionate about the broader mission of the organization. An application review committee composed of our own scientists evaluates each candidate. Executive leadership includes business-school trained Ph.D.’s in Earth & Space sciences who have almost 20 years of combined non-profit management experience and NASA-funded science. Experienced fiscal experts and active software engineers from top Silicon Valley companies complete the team. Low costs are made possible by a lean management structure, use of cloud-based IT infrastructure, and in-house financial management software.

Our research institute is now a regular contributor to the peer-reviewed literature in Earth and Space sciences & space policy (100+ papers published) with grants funded from NASA and NSF totaling over $1M in FY18. A clean audit report recognizes our dedicated efforts to maintain careful accounting. Our public outreach efforts include a science news site summarizing the latest findings in jargon-free short articles, an online platform supported by NASA that enables the general public to actively engage with scientists, urban events that share science through the arts, and international travel to bring science directly to underprivileged communities. Almost 100 students from all over the world have gone through our ‘Young Scientist Program’. We have also brought our expertise in effective science communication to clients, which include the X-prize foundation. Our urban farming initiative enables research and education in sustainable development. Our Office of Space Settlement contributes new ideas to enable the long-term presence of humans in space beyond engineering advances. We seek to keep growing our impact in our local communities, as we have already through the outreach experiences of our Young Scientist Program participants and across the broader scientific community, by co-sponsoring scientific meetings and through our publications.