Thursday, July 21, 2022, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT

In the Artemis Plan, NASA has outlined its strategy to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over half a century and “lay the foundation for a sustained long-term presence on the lunar surface”. A major piece of this foundation will be the placement of the Artemis Base Camp at the lunar south pole. Consisting of an unpressurized rover, a pressurized rover, and a pressurized surface habitat, the base camp will allow astronauts to complete multi-month exploration and science missions from the surface of the Moon.

Once completed, the Artemis Base Camp will be a good initial step towards establishing sustained operations on the lunar surface. Ensuring humanity’s long-term presence on the Moon, however, will require far more than infrastructure that allows no more than one- or two-month crewed expeditions. A long-term presence on the Moon will require long-term planning and a sustained commitment from the United States and its partners. Join us for a discussion with representatives from government, industry, and academia on what the expansion of the Artemis Base Camp may look like, why lunar development matters, and how lessons learned from the Artemis program could help to enable sustainable, long-term economic development on the Moon in the decades to come. PROGRAM Panel Discussion Bhavya Lal, Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy, NASA Peter Garretson, Senior Fellow in Defense Studies, American Foreign Policy Council Vishnu Reddy, Associate Professor, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona Tyler Bender, Policy Analyst, Beyond Earth Institute – Moderator

FEATURED SPEAKERS with BIOS

As the associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy within the office of the NASA Administrator, Bhavya Lal is responsible for providing evidence-driven advice to NASA leadership on internal and external policy issues, strategic planning, and technology investments. She also provides executive leadership and direction to the newly created Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy within the office of the administrator. Dr. Lal is currently the acting chief technologist of NASA, the first woman to hold the position in NASA’s 60+ year history. Prior to her current role and in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration, she was the Acting Chief of Staff at NASA, and directed the agency’s transition under the administration of President Biden. Before arriving at NASA, she had served as a member of the Presidential Transition Agency Review Teams for both NASA and the Department of Defense. For 15 years prior to that, Dr. Lal led strategy, technology assessment, and policy studies and analyses at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) for government sponsors including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Space Council, NASA, Department of Defense, and other Federal Departments and Agencies. Before coming to IDA, she was the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies at Abt Associates, a global policy research and consulting firm based in Cambridge MA. Dr. Lal’s analyses have been at the center of almost all space-relevant polices for the last decade. For her many contributions to the space community, she was nominated and selected to be a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics. Dr. Lal is an active member of the space technology and policy community, having chaired, co-chaired or served on five high-impact National Academy of Science (NAS) ad hoc committees. She served two consecutive terms on the NOAA Federal Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES), was an External Council Member of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, and selected to join the NASA Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee (NAC/TIE). She co-founded and was co-chair of the policy track of the American Nuclear Society’s annual conference on Nuclear and Emerging Technologies in Space (NETS), and co-organized a seminar series on space history and policy with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Dr. Lal holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a second master’s from MIT’s Technology and Policy Program, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from George Washington University. She is a member of both the nuclear engineering and public policy and public administration honor societies and has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.   Peter Garretson is a Senior Fellow in Defense Studies with the American Foreign Policy Council and co-director if its Space Policy Initiative and host of the Space Strategy Podcast.  He was previously the director of Air University’s Space Horizons Task Force, an Air Force think tank for space, and was a founder and deputy director of the U.S. Space Force’s Schriever Scholars Strategy Seminar, America’s premier military space strategy program. He is the author of Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.   Dr. Reddy’s research focuses on understanding the behavior of space objects (natural and artificial) using a range of Earth and space-based assets. His work on natural moving objects (asteroids, near-Earth objects) is directed towards their characterization for impact hazard assessment/mitigation, asteroid-meteorite link and resource utilization. To this effort, Dr. Reddy uses the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i. The orbital space around the Earth is an invaluable resource that is increasingly becoming congested, contested, and competitive with the ever increasing threat from artificial and our adversaries. Dr. Reddy uses the same techniques used to characterize asteroid to study the behavior of artificial objects to identify their nature, intent and origin. He is setting up a space material characterization lab to observe the reflectance properties of natural (meteorites/minerals) and artificial space material in space like conditions.   Tyler Ryan Bender is a Policy Analyst with the Beyond Earth Institute, and a federal contractor supporting the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. His current work with Beyond Earth is focused on the potential long-term impact of NASA’s Artemis program. He is a Marine Corps veteran and has a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Tyler is also a former independent candidate for the U.S. Congress. During his brief, but inspired, 2018 campaign to represent Indiana’s 3rd district, he advocated for an end to partisan gridlock and stronger U.S. leadership in expanding humanity’s presence in outer space. Prior to transitioning to a career in space, he worked for a decade in broadband telecommunications while he was raising his daughter.