What if we could safeguard Earth’s incredible biodiversity, not just for today, but for the future? Thanks to advancements in cryogenics, we might be able to store life on the Moon, preserving plants, animals, and fungi as a backup—just in case, or even to help start life on other worlds. Jekan Thanga has a background in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto. At MDA Space Missions, he worked on Canadarm, Canadarm 2, and the DARPA Orbital Express missions. Jekan obtained his Ph.D. in space robotics at the UTIAS and did his postdoc at MIT's Field and Space Robotics Laboratory (FSRL). Jekan Thanga is an Associate Professor and heads the Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Jekan and his students have co-authored more than 200 technical publications and were winners of the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award in 2016 for proposing the SunCube FemtoSat. His team won a Best Paper Presentation Award at AMOS 2019 for the Early Warning Constellation to Detect Incoming Meteor Threats. In 2024, he co-authored a Best Paper on using inflatable rovers to explore lunar and Martian lava tubes at the Earth and Space Conference. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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