Moriba Jah

Moriba Kemessia Jah CorrFRSE (born 1971) is an American space scientist and aerospace engineer who describes himself as a "space environmentalist". Jah is adamant finding solution to the accumulating garbage in space. He specializes in orbit determination and prediction, especially as related to space situational awareness and space traffic monitoring. He is currently a full professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, a position he attained in 2024, and a National Geographic Explorer. Jah has co-founded Privateer Space x Orbital Insight, GaiaVerse, and Moriba Jah Universal. His work now broadly focuses on decision intelligence to improve the stewardship of the planet and beyond.

In 2024, Privateer Space acquired Orbital Insight, a satellite imagery analytics company, following Series A Funding. Jah has authored a number of academic papers, including Entropy-based approach for uncertainty propagation of nonlinear dynamical systems. Jah previously worked as a spacecraft navigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was involved in navigation for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rover, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, and the Royal Astronomical Society. Jah was selected for the 10th anniversary class of TED Fellows and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. He also was selected for the AIAA class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows in the year of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11. Jah's work has been featured in Nature, Popular Science, and National Geographic.