Space no longer the final frontier | ASU News
By Scott Bordow for ASU News |
As the Aerospace and Defense Summit got underway on May 15 in Los Angeles, the purpose of the summit was made abundantly clear.
“Space is no longer the frontier,” said Anna Magzanyan, president of LA Times Studios and NantStudios, both Los Angeles Times Media Group companies. “It is the infrastructure. It is the backbone of our communication, our commerce and our national security.”
The Times Media Group and Arizona State University co-hosted the summit that united key policymakers, defense leaders and innovators in the space industry, which, according to the event page on the LA Times website, has become the “central nervous system of modern civilization.”
“Think about all the systems that we take for granted each and every day,” said Sally Morton, executive vice president and chief research and innovation officer for ASU’s Knowledge Enterprise.
“Our global financial markets, our transportation and logistics chains, our ability to connect to others. These systems are reliant on our space communication networks.”
Morton said holding the summit at NantStudios, a virtual production company located in El Segundo, California, and having ASU as a summit partner was apropos because NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is located in California, and ASU is working with the United States government and industry leaders to ensure research and development can make its way onto the launchpad.
“Arizona and California are at the heart of this space renaissance,” Morton said.
Morton also noted that the ASU California Center is located in downtown Los Angeles. California is home to more than 100,000 students who have enrolled in ASU programs over the past 25 years.
The summit featured several panel discussions, video remarks from Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and a conversation between ASU President Michael Crow and Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and executive chairman of biotechnology company ImmunityBio and owner of the Los Angeles Times.
ASU President Michael Crow (left) greets Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and executive chairman of ImmunityBio and owner of the Los Angeles Times, during the Aerospace and Defense Summit held in Los Angeles on May 15. The event was co-hosted by ASU and the Los Angeles Times Media Group. Photo by Dania Maxwell
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