About the Space Consortium
The Space Consortium was founded in Fall 2017 when a concerted effort supported by the Harvard Provost Office brought together faculty members from Harvard and MIT to work towards a common goal: creating the first academic space hub for multidisciplinary space research. Today, the consortium serves a network of over 530 affiliates (students, faculty and alumni) in the US, working on a wide range of topics, including Space Genetics, Space Economics and Financing, Space Debris and Near-Earth Objects Detection and Tracking, Space Mining, Space Design and Architecture, and Space Law and Policy. Strengthening relations between the multiple disciplines of the field is a key driving force for the Consortium, along with coordinating and nurturing the community to increase work and engagement with the general public and the private space sector.
During Space Week in Boston, the Consortium’s annual outreach series of events, the Consortium promotes fruitful exchanges between an array of affiliated top experts, business and community leaders, faculty, researchers, educators, students, and alumni, which allows the community to engage with critical discussions related to the multidisciplinary issues affecting the aerospace industry today.
All Space Week events (formerly known as Space Week at Harvard and now extended to the greater Boston area) are free and open to the public. Through experts’ lightning talks, keynotes, a space career fair, and a week-long Space Film Festival, Consortium members and the greater Boston community are invited to discover the intricate hot-button topics in the field. Participants have access to an exclusive and unique networking opportunity with the world’s most important actors and thinkers.
Past topics have included Mars and Moon exploration, space medicine, space mining, the latest NASA missions and instrumentation, public-private partnerships, Space Design, and Space curation. Past speakers have included Jeffrey Hoffman (Former NASA Astronaut and Deputy PI of the Mars MOXIE experiment), Professor Kim Kowal (Chandra X-ray Observatory), Astronaut Soyeon Yi, and Richard Dalbello (VP of Business Development and Government Affairs, Virgin Galactic).
Space Week 2023
This year, Space Week in Boston, 5th Ed. will take place April 17th-22nd 2023, and, among other noteworthy events, featured a Space Career Fair, a Dark Sky trip, activities such as “Space Night”, and a week-long Space Film Festival where space experts discussed some of the most iconic space movies of the past two decades.
Be a Space Consortium Supporter
As a supporter of the Space Consortium, you will help a dynamic grassroot volunteer initiative for Harvard and MIT space affiliates which promotes diversity with respect to gender, age, geography, and economic status in the space sector, as well as enable new outreach activities dedicated to the promotion and celebration of space research to students and the general public. Your support will also empower the growth of undergraduate and graduate space student groups, aerospace projects, and new initiatives like the Space Consortium’s economic diversity fund. In the long term, the Consortium aims to strengthen cutting edge multi and transdisciplinary space research that transcends university boundaries, continue building an aerospace alumni network, and provide support for new innovative outreach initiative.