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.

这项博士学位论文改善赠款支持一个项目，该项目研究了由于最近出现的低地球轨道（LEO）卫星星座而引起的社会经济和环境冲突。新一代的狮子座星座运营商认为，他们可以克服现有的基础设施障碍，以在全球范围内提供可靠的宽带互联网。但是，LEO星座引起了有关LEO Internet连接性的可行性，天文学研究的未来以及如何在未来的环境立法中构建外层空间的新的重叠冲突。该项目将研究涉及的利益相关者如何在卫星星座提供的无处不在，身体上不绑定的连接性的主张中，并将这些连通性与在这个大规模外层空间商业化时代的环境和外太空中的话语和法律斗争联系起来。该项目的结果将用于告知关于外太空调节的持续政策辩论。该研究解决了以下研究问题：LEO经营者，政府机构，天文学家，环境活动家和农村社区如何概念化LEO基础设施发展期间的位置和自然？卫星运营商，天文学家和农村社区如何谈判由低地球轨道中卫星星座的物质存在引起的新颖地点挑战？对外太空作为人类或非人类环境的理解如何与环境行动主义和LEO卫星基础设施的技术生命周期有关？该项目将科学和技术研究的理论框架与多人民族志，半结构化访谈和纪录片分析相结合。它将研究LEO卫星星座的部署，操作和调节，以及对专业天文学社区，环境活动家，立法机构和农村社区对这些卫星的反应，以相比说明这些参与者的位置，自然和环境以及这些概念选择的更大后果的概念。在这样做的过程中，研究重点介绍了狮子座星座供应链沿线的数字和环境不平等问题，并将引起立法者，计算专业人员和致力于创建更可持续的网络基础架构的学者的兴趣。该奖项反映了NSF的宣传任务，并认为通过基金会的智力效果进行评估，并值得通过评估来进行评估。