Space Safety and Sustainability Project Group
 

 

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Meet our Core team!

Project Group Co-Lead
Alessandra Capurro

Alessandra Capurro

Alessandra is an Aerospace Engineer, EPFL alumni, currently working at Beyond Gravity in Zurich, Switzerland, as a manufacturing engineer of high precision mechanisms for satellites. She is deeply interested in environmental issues and aims to bring sustainable thinking to the space sector. Her interest in sustainability led to the creation of a project focused on Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) for which she was nominated Next Generation Hero 2021 in Switzerland. She did her master’s thesis in LCA of ground-based observing facilities for the European Southern Observatory (ESO). She was invited as a speaker to talk about sustainability in space at the House of Beautiful Business yearly event in 2021, and in various podcasts afterwards.

Project Group Co-Lead
Rachita Puri

Rachita Puri

Rachita is an Aerospace Engineer at the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in Washington D.C. In her current role, she leads the comprehensive safety evaluation process to authorize U.S. commercial space operations, with a focus on human spaceflight missions. She also actively collaborates with other government entities to enable safe and sustainable integration of commercial space operations into the current global framework. Prior to her current role, Rachita graduated from The Ohio State University, with a B.S. degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering with Honors. At OSU, she was awarded with the 2020 Aerospace Engineering Outstanding Senior Award and was a part of the Global Option in Engineering Program, though which she completed aerospace internships in India and Poland. Rachita is passionate about advancing space exploration responsibly, and she strives to make a meaningful impact through sustained international collaboration.

Project Group Partnerships Lead
Salman Ali Thepdawala

Salman Ali is an Aerospace engineer from Pakistan and is passionate about education, sustainability and market opportunities within the space ecosystem. He is currently a Munich Aerospace PhD scholar at Universität der Bundeswehr, Germany, working on a solution for AI-based Onboard Collision Avoidance in Large Multi-Satellite Systems. In his free time, he helps Neutron Star Systems with technical projects, proposals and representation in Munich. Besides, Salman Ali serves various roles at multiple space sector NGOs, most notably as the National Coordinator for Germany at the Moon Village Association (MVA) and as Partnerships Lead for the Space Safety and Sustainability Project Group at the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC).

PR and Communications Coordinator
Subhrajit Barua

Subhrajit is an M.S. graduate from ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia. He is an ardent astrobiology researcher and his work deals with space omics and astronaut health. He studies the effects of microgravity, ionizing radiation, and magnetic fields on gene expression and correlates their effects on physiological pathways.

He is also a graduate of Rencontres Exobiologiques pour Doctorants 2021, France, and has experience in teaching astrobiology.

Besides academia, he is also passionate about science communication and outreach.

Project Group Members Coordinator
Kyle Cybul

Kyle Cybul

Kyle is an MBA graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a focus on Strategy & Innovation. He is business-oriented with a deep passion for space and sustainability. 

He is also the Founder of a Space Sustainability startup called the Clean Orbit Foundation (COF), which aims to be a central hub for education, information archives, collaboration, and idea-sharing. Our goal is to help centralize the world’s information on space debris and space sustainability into a database, simplify it to make it more easily understandable to anyone, and build an educational platform to close the gap in common knowledge to bring more awareness to the industry and problem.

Project Group Members Coordinator
Joe Humphries

Joe Humphries

Joe is an engineer in the Australian Space Industry, having completed his Master’s of Space Operations in mid-2022. His professional background is in strategy, problem solving, requirements engineering, and technical documentation.

He is currently pursuing his interests in space domain awareness systems through research on the intersection of information systems and human factors.