Jackson School Professor Saadia Pekkanen explores in her recent Forbes column the Asian race for wining Google’s prestigious lunar X Prize competition, a challenge designed to inspire engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration.
Asia’s proven track record in outer space affairs have lured space entrepreneurs in India, Japan and Malaysia to form teams competing for the grand $20 million prize to develop a rover to land on the moon.
Saadia Pekkanen is the founding Director of the Jackson School Ph.D. Program and the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies. Her areas of research interest include outer space security, law, and policy with regional expertise in the international relations of Japan/Asia. She is the Founding Co-Director of the UW-Space Policy and Research Center (SPARC), and Founding Co-Chair of the U.S.-Japan Space Forum. She is also the Founding Director of the UW-Qualitative Multi-Methods Research Program (QUAL).