Biographie
Moriba Kemessia Jah was born in San Francisco, to Elsie Turnier, a physical therapist, and Abraham Jah, a college professor. His parents divorced when he was young and he relocated with his mother to Caracas Venezuela in 1978. Jah attended the Cap. Pedro Ma. Ochoa Morales Military School in Venezuela, undergraduate studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he graduated as an Aerospace Engineer and Astrodynamicist. Jah began his space career as a missile cop in Montana, guarding nukes while watching satellites go overhead during his night shifts. Eventually he made it into the technical staff at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Spacecraft Navigator for Mars missions. After a trip to Maui, he left NASA to work for the Air Force Research Laboratory, where he became acquainted with the space debris and environmental problem. Eventually he left federal government service to pursue his space environmentalist passion and evangelism at The University of Texas at Austin where he is the first black professor and holder of the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering, in the Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics department. Jah's developing "Eyes on the Sky" and leading transdisciplinary research and story telling for space safety, security, and sustainability. Jah lives in Austin Texas with his wife Cassaundra and they have three children: Denali, Inara "Benji", and Satyana.
Moriba is a Fellow of multiple organizations: TED, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Astronautical Society, International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, Royal Astronomical Society, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. He has served on the US delegation to the United Nations Committee On Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, is an elected Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics, and has testified to congress on his work as related to Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management. He's an Co-Editor of the IAA and Elsevier Acta Astronautica journal, and serves on multiple committees: IAA Space Traffic Management, IAA Space Debris, AIAA Astrodynamics, IAF Astrodynamics, and IAF Space Security. He has his own op-ed column in the AIAA Aerospace America magazine, called Jahniverse, and hosts a webcast called Moriba's Vox Populi via SpaceWatch.Global.
