Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Arizona State Envisions Office Park in Space

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 11/17/21

The ultimate coworking space for digital nomads is on the drawing board. Working alongside others, Arizona State University is developing a space station that acts as a business park.

"Orbital Reef," as it's being called, will be situated in low Earth orbit and enable companies to run operations for research, manufacturing, travel, education and exploration. They'll lease space in the facility, akin to current coworking setups, with a big exception. People will have to live on board, at least for short periods.

The collaborative project is being led by the School of Earth and Space Exploration Interplanetary Initiative, headed by Professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton. She is also a principal investigator of the Psyche mission, an ASU and NASA space mission to visit a metal asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

Orbital Reef space station rendering
Rendering of the Orbital Reef space station. Courtesy of Blue Origin Media.

Elkins-Tanton said the goal of Orbital Reef is to make space exploration "accessible for so many more people who can participate in many different ways." The expectation is that sharing the expense and complexity of living and working in low Earth orbit will open the "space economy" to small businesses and nations.

ASU is working with a number of space companies on the project, including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space and Genesis Engineering.

The Interplanetary Initiative runs an advisory council with representatives from more than a dozen international universities. According to ASU, their goals are to "establish guidelines and standards of conduct for ethical research on the station, provide consulting for those new to space research, channel academic research onto Orbital Reef, inform the academic user experience aboard the station and conduct STEM outreach and education programs."

The project hosts a 6,800-square-foot lab that serves as a research and development workspace where companies collaborate with students, faculty and staff to design, build and test space hardware and software.

Officials said the research topics they're currently exploring in the project include these:

  • How can we sustain healthy communities in space?
  • How will we manage shared resources in space, from satellites and space debris to minable asteroids?
  • How can we better connect humans and robots in space exploration?
  • How would humankind react to the discovery of alien life?

"Humans are compelled to explore; it's in our bones. We will become an interplanetary species," Elkins-Tanton said, in a statement. "We have an opportunity to use the inspiration of space exploration to take better care of the Earth by involving all of society and driving technological advances that will help solve problems here below."

"Shifting our mindset to see ourselves as a team of crewmates aboard a space vessel — Earth — opens the door to shared purpose and better cooperation," added Jessica Rousset, deputy director of Interplanetary Initiative.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Round Rock ISD Completes New Early College High School

    Round Rock ISD near Austin, Texas, recently announced that construction is complete on a new, 46,500-square-foot campus for Early College High School, according to a news release. The new facility will allow the school’s students and staff to move from portables into a permanent building and increase its enrollment to 500.

  • University of Arizona Approves New Residence Hall

    The Arizona Board of Regents recently approved plans for a new residence hall at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., according to a news release. The new facility is scheduled to open in fall 2028 and have the capacity for more than 1,200 students, enforcing a new university expectation that all first-year students live on campus.

  • Houston-Area High School Breaks Ground on 117,000SF Multi-Use Facility

    North Shore Senior High School, part of Galena Park ISD in Houston, Texas, recently broke ground on a new multi-use facility for student extracurriculars, according to a news release. The North Shore Multi-Use Facility will include dedicated practice and training space for the school’s athletics and fine arts programs.

  • How a Portable Sink Helped an Art Classroom Run More Smoothly

    Classroom design decisions can have outsized effects on instructional time and safety at schools juggling mismatched infrastructure, strict budgets, and crowded schedules — particularly in the arts. Between spilled paint and dirty brushes, art classes run smoother with a sink in the studio. But many schools don’t have a sink in every art classroom.