The ability to imagine has given the human species the power to create, problem solve, empathize, and theorize. In fact, creative imagination can be found at the origin of every modern development throughout time. From medical advancements and the formation of governments to the establishment of the internet and the creation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 — all at first were simply imagined.

So, it is not a leap to think that in establishing a space institute at the University of Florida, collaborators would continue to anchor the institution in the human element of imagination. That’s where space exploration began.

Ancient Greek philosopher Thales, later known as the father of Greek science and mathematics, questioned the true origins of the universe. Introducing deductive reasoning, Thales sought answers beyond the stories of gods and heroes. Three hundred years later, Aristotle theorized the geocentric layout of the universe with Earth at its stationery core and celestial bodies revolving around it.

In the early 14th century, the Italian poet Dante told the story of a vertical journey through the universe, reaching the stars in what he described as paradise. And in the fall of 1609, Galileo began observing the heavens with instruments he created to magnify his view up to 20 times beyond what the natural eye could see. Through his telescope, Galileo observed mountains on the moon, rings around Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, all evidence that the universe did not revolve around the Earth, but the sun.

Inspired by words written in 1865 by Jules Verne in his novel, “De la Terre à la Lune” (From the Earth to the Moon), a 10-year-old Russian boy questioned, could travel be possible beyond the Earth’s atmosphere? Could Verne’s 900-foot-long space gun propel humans — or anything for that matter — through the bonds of gravity and into outer space?

Maybe not, but it was that thought, that very human characteristic of curiosity that drove that boy — eventually a high school math teacher, to create what is argued as the basic mathematical equation for space flight. Today, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is known as the grandfather of modern rocketry.

Some 30 years later, this time in Worcester, Massachusetts, another young boy read H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic, “The War of the Worlds.” The next year, at the age of 17, after climbing a cherry tree to cut off its dead limbs, he became fascinated with the sky.

“I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet,” he later wrote. “It seemed to me then that a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below, could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path. I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended. Existence at last seemed very purposive.”

These imaginings led engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor Robert Hutchings Goddard to create and build the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. And upon his work, modern rocket innovation was born.

First formed in the minds of ancient philosophers, poets, writers, astronomers, and mathematicians, the idea of a world beyond our own and its potential exploration came to be. With the imagination ignited by the human element of curiosity and the advancement of science, humankind has made yesterday’s fiction into today’s reality and, potentially, tomorrow’s quest.

Forming Astraeus

In January 2024, UF announced that $2.5 million of funding received from the Florida Legislature for the advancement of interdisciplinary scholarship and enhancement of the student experience would be earmarked for the development of a space-related institute.

Managed by UF Research, the UF Astraeus Space Institute was formed with Rob Ferl, distinguished professor who studies biology in space, named as its inaugural director. When first developing the idea of a space institute at the University of Florida, Ferl seized the opportunity to make humanities an integral part of the conversation.

“In starting a space institute here now, we have the benefit of being able to look back and say in this new era, the commercial space era, the space station era, the era when more and more people are going into space, if we were to re-imagine what a space institute could look like, what would we want to do now?”

“One of the things that we bring to the table at the University of Florida is that we have the breadth of expertise here — the human element, what the very idea of space means to us as a people, what does it mean to our various cultures, is the moon different for different people, what about how we consider space overall,” Ferl said.

As director of Astraeus, Ferl brought a humanist on board as one of his first tasks. Terry Harpold, associate professor of English, is a scholar of science fiction literature and film and is one of five assistant directors with Astraeus. Harpold is charged with advancing the conversation and collaboration across the disciplines of science, the humanities, and the arts.

“To his credit, Rob Ferl’s vision of the space institute goes beyond a massive bureaucratic effort to coordinate projects and seek large grants. It is about understanding not just the how of space exploration, but also the why of it, in all the forms that question takes. This is not merely a technical enterprise or a commercial enterprise, but it is also a cultural enterprise, an imaginative enterprise,” Harpold said.

Enabling the conversation

“My role is to create opportunities for others to have the conversations that move us forward intentionally, collaboratively, in a way that cross-pollinates our disciplines,” Harpold said.

“The vision of Astraeus that is beginning to emerge is, for example, one in which a poet and an aerospace engineer can develop a more nuanced understanding of what a satellite represents in the imagination as it moves through its orbit. Or a human performance researcher studying the effects of weightlessness on the body might work with a dance choreographer to catalogue the strangely aesthetic qualities of astronauts’ everyday movements in a microgravity environment. You don’t know what’s going to happen to your perception of something when you start dialoguing about it from multiple, even inconsistent, perspectives. And that creates new forms of knowledge.”

A series of public-facing speaker events co-organized by Harpold and Jordan Callaham, Astraeus’s assistant director for administration, kicked off in the fall 2024 to do just that. Speakers included Christian Davenport, a reporter with The Washington Post who covers space and author of “The Space Barons: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos” (2018); a seminar on the search for extraterrestrial life with astronomer and former NASA Chief Scientist John Grunsfeld, a veteran of five space shuttle flights, including three to repair the Hubble Space Telescope; a presentation on geospatial intelligence by Byron Knight, a distinguished UF alumnus and chief scientist in the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate at the National Reconnaissance Office; and a lecture on “Our Moon, Ourselves” by science journalist Rebecca Boyle, author of “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are” (2024).

In creating these opportunities for varied, interdisciplinary conversations, Ferl hopes the Astraeus community can help overcome the perceived divide between the humanities and the disciplines of science. Creating an environment of understanding and appreciation for both approaches is crucial for a successful discussion, he said.

“I can never master my colleagues’ fields. Everyone in this community is specialized in what they do and it might seem at first that they don’t have many interests in common,” Harpold said. “But I can be their ally in every sense of the word, and they can be mine, and we can do stuff together that is innovative and beautiful.”

Amy Williams, associate professor of geology and an astrobiologist and geo-biologist within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, also serves as an assistant director for Astraeus. Williams sees Astraeus as a vehicle to bring together people who did not have that common space, that common umbrella to unite them previously.

“I see it from the scientific perspective, but I have been so encouraged that from its inception, the space institute is meant to be a place for everyone by everyone, and what excites me is thinking about how the humanities do play a role in our exploration, perception of and respect for space,” Williams said. “The human component does sometimes get ignored. But CLAS has gone above and beyond to bring that human perspective to both the challenges and the things that we celebrate as a group.”

Within Astraeus, Williams focuses on student experience, engagement, and perception of the space program. “The number of students who reach out to me on a daily basis wanting to do astrobiology research or planetary science — which is just one corner of what we do just even at UF, is tremendous,” Williams said.

Her goal is to expand the community to answer the enormous demand and serve the students who are interested in working in the space industry, in whatever capacity that may be. By potentially expanding the course offerings, providing students help with navigating internships and developing relationships with industry partners, we can, in turn, feed the growing space workforce and the Florida economy.

Preparing for deeper impact

With a global space economy estimated at $630 million in 2023 and projected to reach $1.8 billion by 2035, the opportunity for growth is near limitless.

Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging market development with American aerospace manufacturer and space technologies company Blue Origin, said the integral incorporation of the humanities into the UF Institute is what distinguishes it among its peers.

“While we often think of space through a lens of science and technology, it has always been a field deeply intertwined with people, history, policy, culture, design, and storytelling,” Wagner said.

“A program that gives students the tools to think about this holistically will position them for deeper impact. And a research portfolio that grapples with this in a transdisciplinary way will understand the motivations, possibilities, and challenges of our future in space far better than any narrow lens can.

“Space exploration has always taken all of us — not just engineers and scientists and technicians, but policymakers, designers, accountants, lawyers, writers, human resources, and on and on. Professionals who couple a liberal arts education with a robust understanding of the field will unlock enormous possibilities,” Wagner added.

The mission at hand

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said at Rice University, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Less than seven years later, that goal was met. But is the Astraeus goal quite as finite?

“We want to have an organically developed and eventually defined community of people that looks at the broad aspects of space exploration in ways that are curiosity driven, that are informed by the breadth of the university and that catapult any of the university efforts beyond what any individual might be able to do,” Ferl said.

Astraeus, Ferl said, will strive “to create a culture of broad-ranging input where if somebody raises their hand and asks the question, what happens to music in space? We ought to be able to talk about that, wonder about it and see if there is a question that we can start to answer.”

In five years, Ferl imagines a “community of a few hundred students, and a couple hundred faculty, where engineers are sitting down with biologists across the table from lawyers and philosophers. Where an idea is explored and analyzed from not just the scientific perspective but economic, social, philosophical and environmental.”

UF’s Astraeus Space Institute stands poised to blend the human elements of imagination and curiosity with critical analysis and scientific reasoning as we step into the new era of space exploration and inspire generations beyond our own. 

Research Connections

Imagination and creativity often prompt us to question the world around us. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences plays an integral role in finding answers to those questions through space-based research. Here we highlight a few interdisciplinary projects currently underway within CLAS.

Are we alone in the universe?

Amy Williams, associate professor of geology, takes her study of the Earth and expands it to the study of other worlds.

Williams has spent most of her career performing analogous research on Earth as it applies to Mars. By using examples from Earth, where we know life exists, researchers can compare what evidence of life we may or may not find on other worlds.

“Analyses performed in my lab are meant to mimic the flight instruments on planetary missions to refine how you perform the experiments in situ, like on Mars,” Williams said.

This summer, Williams visited Iceland to collect samples from the bottoms of hydrothermal lakes. Analyzing the sediment samples, measuring 100 degrees centigrade when taken, could tell researchers much about what happened on Mars in its early development.

But lately, Williams’ work has taken her from the dry, cold world of Mars to the icy, ocean worlds of Europa and Enceladus. Moons of Jupiter and Saturn, both are optimistically considered as potential habitats for life.

“Looking at how life might have evolved on other worlds really informs me how much the evolution of life intertwines with how the Earth has evolved,” Williams said. “It makes me appreciate the natural world all the more and recognize how unique and special it is.”

By adapting a procedure commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry, Charles Telesco, professor of astronomy, is moving closer to harnessing the use of circularly polarized light to determine whether life exists beyond our world.

Telesco and his team have developed a remote-sensing technique that measures the chiral (mirror-image) properties of a sample’s molecules. Their first-generation prototype can distinguish between biological and non-biological targets even if the composition of the target is unknown. Non-biological matter incorporates both molecular versions (a molecule and its mirror image), whereas life uses only one version of many molecules, a property called homochirality.

“If you were looking for life and you found a substance that may or may not be life, one way to determine very quickly is to determine if the molecules that make it up have the property of homochirality,” Telesco said.

A robust biosignature, molecular homochirality, or having only one of the two versions, is a characteristic of organisms on Earth, with very few exceptions. When analyzed with circularly polarized light, the chirality of molecules can be determined, and within fair certainty, life can be identified.

Telesco and his team are working toward creating a “shoebox-sized” polarimeter suitable for space deployment and detection of extraterrestrial life.

How do rocky planets evolve?

“Everything space-related was cool as a kid. Space was cool, planets were cool,” said Stephen Elardo, assistant professor of geology. When he discovered he could learn more about space through geology, he was hooked.

Elardo studies the evolution of planets, in particular rocky objects like the moon. By studying how the moon and rocky planets such as Mars, Venus and Mercury have cooled through time, researchers can learn much about how they evolved.

With his research, Elardo hopes to answer, “How do we go from the nebula-making planets through making all the individual other planets with cores, mantles, and crusts, and how do they evolve geologically through time to end up so very different?”

The best sampled celestial body we have is the moon — and there is no better way to study these than having actual rocks in the laboratory, Elardo said.

Elardo’s current focus is on getting the scientific community ready for samples returning on Artemis 3, currently slated for late 2026. He is preparing a $7.5 million NASA proposal involving field work, lab work and plant-growth work in collaboration with his colleagues in IFAS.