DDRIG: Ethereal infrastructure: Placelessness, nature, and low-earth-orbit satellite internet constellations

DDRIG：虚无缥缈的基础设施：无处可归、自然和近地轨道卫星互联网星座

• 批准号: 2341629
• 负责人: Phoebe Sengers
• 金额: $ 2.14万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-04-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2341629&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DDRIG; Ethereal; infrastructure; Placelessness; nature

This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant supports a project that examines the socio-economic and environmental conflicts arising from the recent emergence of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. A new generation of LEO constellation operators argue they can overcome existing infrastructural barriers to provide reliable broadband internet worldwide. However, LEO constellations engender new, overlapping conflicts concerning the viability of LEO internet connectivity, the future of astronomical research, and how outer space will be framed in future environmental legislation. This project will examine how involved stakeholders navigate and contest the claims of ubiquitous, physically unbound connectivity provided by satellite constellations, and connect these to discursive and legal struggles over the environment and outer space in this era of large-scale outer space commercialization. Results from the project will be used to inform ongoing policy debates over regulation of outer space.The study addresses the following research questions: How do LEO operators, government bodies, astronomers, environmental activists, and rural communities conceptualize place and nature during LEO infrastructure development? How are satellite operators, astronomers, and rural communities negotiating novel place-based challenges arising from the material presence of satellite constellations in low-earth-orbit? How are understandings of outer space as a human or non-human environment linked to environmental activism and the technological life cycle of LEO satellite infrastructure? This project combines theoretical frameworks from Science and Technology Studies with multi-sited ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis. It will examine the deployment, operation, and regulation of LEO satellite constellations and the responses to these from the professional astronomical community, environmental activists, legislative bodies, and rural communities to provide a comparative account of how place, nature, and the environment are being conceptualized by these actors, and the larger consequences of these conceptual choices. In doing so, the research highlights issues of digital and environmental inequality along the LEO constellation supply chain and will be of interest to lawmakers, computing professionals, and scholars committed to creating more sustainable networking infrastructures.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该博士论文改进补助金支持一个项目，该项目审查了最近出现的低地球轨道（LEO）卫星星座所引起的社会经济和环境冲突。新一代低轨星座运营商认为，他们可以克服现有的基础设施障碍，在全球范围内提供可靠的宽带互联网。然而，低地球轨道星座在低地球轨道互联网连接的可行性、天文学研究的未来以及外层空间在未来环境立法中的框架方面产生了新的重叠冲突。该项目将研究参与的利益攸关方如何驾驭和质疑卫星星座提供的无处不在、物理上不受约束的连通性的主张，并将这些主张与大规模外层空间商业化时代围绕环境和外层空间的话语和法律的斗争联系起来。该项目的结果将用于为正在进行的外层空间监管政策辩论提供信息，研究涉及以下研究问题：低地球轨道运营商、政府机构、天文学家、环境活动家和农村社区如何在低地球轨道基础设施开发期间将地点和自然概念化？卫星运营商、天文学家和农村社区如何应对低地球轨道卫星星座的物质存在所带来的新的基于地点的挑战？将外层空间理解为人类或非人类环境与环境活动和低地球轨道卫星基础设施的技术寿命周期有何联系？该项目将科学技术研究的理论框架与多地点民族志、半结构化访谈和文献分析相结合。它将研究LEO卫星星座的部署，操作和监管，以及专业天文学界，环境活动家，立法机构和农村社区对这些的反应，以提供这些行为者如何将地点，自然和环境概念化的比较说明，以及这些概念选择的更大后果。该研究突出了LEO星座供应链沿着的数字和环境不平等问题，并将引起致力于创建更可持续的网络基础设施的立法者、计算专业人士和学者的兴趣。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。