MISSION

Preparing humanity to become a spacefaring species

 
 

Trailblazers are already building the road to space. It’s time to design, build, test, and create a life worth living once we get there. Aurelia Institute will plant the seeds of a principled, inclusive, and visionary spacefaring civilization at the dawn of the “Anthropocosmos.”

 
 
 

We envision a future where life in space is welcoming, enticing, and practically accessible for all people–whether they wish to make space their new home, or visit briefly to catch a glimpse of our beautiful blue marble planet. While Earth will remain the home base for humanity, we want more people to feel that they can be part of humanity’s space future—both participating in it and building it.

Aurelia Institute is working toward establishing a new culture of space that is not just for astronauts and the privileged few, but also for artists and lawyers, healthcare professionals and teachers, essential workers, and tourists.

 
 

Our efforts are focused in three core areas:

 

  • Aurelia Institute is an advanced technology research institute for foundational infrastructure for a space society. Our experts are concerned with the structures, materials, technologies, and in-space manufacturing techniques that will make it possible to build larger-scale habitats and increase the number and diversity of people who can participate in life in orbit. As our portfolio grows, and we can leverage the “road to space” of an emerging space economy, we will also explore surface habitats on celestial bodies in the near neighborhood of our solar system. We are a fast-moving fabrication and deployment team, with regular spaceflight launches to test and iterate on our engineering concepts. We are also a generator of translational IP for the public benefit, with a highly collaborative model for spinning out new technologies that may contribute to life in space.

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  • At Aurelia Institute, we want to make space real and accessible to all people. People of all ages, backgrounds, and skill sets should have the opportunity to understand what space is about, what’s available to them, how to get to space, and how they might live, play, and work effectively in different space environments. To that end, Aurelia Institute creates and collaborates on outreach programs to engage broad audiences in direct spaceflight opportunities , educational courses to broaden access to insider knowledge and train the next generation, and community building to grow a global, professional membership network. Aurelia offers a best-in-class flight mission academy to open, diversify, and empower access to space exploration.

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  • For space to be for everyone, it needs to be designed for everyone. For space habitation to be sustainable, it needs to be managed sustainably. Aurelia Institute’s policy arm considers the real and philosophical challenges of creating an inclusive, equitable, and accessible foundation for a society in space–from negotiating resource sharing in the “space commons,” to key governance questions for future human settlements, to the ethics of novel technology development upon which human life in extreme environments will depend.

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Our Mission

 

Aurelia Institute's continuing mission is to prepare humanity to become a spacefaring species. Our aim is to develop the technologies, communities, and policies that will help us scale humanity’s horizons from early space stations in LEO to the fullness of an interplanetary civilization.

We engage with a strong network of corporate partners, universities and educational institutions, government agencies, and advanced R&D labs to design, build, and test the future in space we want to see.

 
 
Artist's rendering of the inside of a futuristic space structure, with flower-patterned windows looking out at Earth

Designing structures that are hospitable in the extreme environment of space.

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Fliers communicate using sign language while floating in zero-g during a parabolic flight.

Preparing individuals to pursue different types of activities in zero gravity.

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Our Values

We are a diverse community of interdisciplinary professionals who are committed to the following principles.

 

  • We aim to make space a mainstream part of humanity, and to build technologies and tools for space that also serve a thriving planet.

  • We encourage expertise and perspectives from all people to build a spacefaring future that reflects the rich tapestry of humanity, and work to set the stage for operationalizing more optimistic, more equitable futures.

  • We empower broader access to knowledge that has long been siloed in “expert circles” and create new technologies that both serve our advanced technology space mission and benefit the public. We offer concrete opportunities to participate hands-on in the creation of new space technologies, and in the narratives that will shape space exploration.

  • We consider the scale, longevity, and life cycle of all space structures and materials, take responsibility for the future of our objects, and aim to foster universal respect for the space commons.

Want to join us on our mission?

Aurelia Institute is a humanist group that cares about both the cutting-edge technical enablers and the cultural, philosophical under-pinnings for space exploration. Our position is that space exploration is not about escaping Earth. We’re building toward a better vision for humanity wherever we may be—on Earth, in orbit around it, and beyond.