EarthDaily & Cornell Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Visit

This spring, I had the privilege of meeting the esteemed Dr. Mason Peck and visiting the renowned Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in Ithaca, NY. The school, a hub of spacecraft engineering, focuses on areas such as propulsion, guidance, and robotics. One of its notable programs is the design of a sophisticated and true-to-life satellite with a dedicated scientific mission, reflecting NASA's annual priorities and opportunities.

The highlight of the visit was also dinner with Dr. Mason Peck, a professor at Cornell University and former NASA Chief Technologist. While at NASA, he was the primary advisor to the NASA Administrator on matters of technology investment strategy, roadmapping, prioritization, partnerships, intellectual property, and commercialization. His areas of academic expertise include next-generation space-system architectures, mission design, and guidance/navigation/control.

At the dinner, we were joined by several other distinguished space industry leaders from Ithaca and upstate New York, each with their unique contributions and expertise.

The companies at the dinner included Ursa, Allen Institute for AI, Rainforest Alliance, Regrow, Empire Space, Cornell, and others. Each company and participant brought their own EO Use Cases to the table. Of special interest was the overview of AI2's large-scale pre-trained geospatial models that can be fine-tuned on downstream tasks, leading to faster training and improved performance compared to training from other initializations.

Special thanks must go to the Ursa team for their hospitality during my visit to Ithaca. I greatly appreciate your introduction to the team at some amazing restaurants—Moosewood, Statler Hotel, Boatyard, and others. Ithaca has a vibrant space community and is absolutely Gorges!