James Schwoch: The battle for 24 GHz. Radio astronomy, Earth observation satellites, passive collection data, and the Cold War origins of radio frequency spectrum auctions

This talk brings together emergent ideas and scholarship about planetary concepts and climate change with selected studies of various instances of radiocommunication: the human uses of radio waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.

The historical focus herein is meteorology, radio astronomy and global radio spectrum management during the Cold War. The rise of radio astronomy in the 1930s and 1940s raised recognition of the significance of the radio spectrum in planet-wide and extraplanetary research and awareness. The initial ITU assignments of radio frequencies crucial to radio astronomy in the 1950s (and in the 1960s, weather satellites) protected spectrum and “radio silence” for extraplanetary radio frequencies, crucial to space missions and satellites; yet such protective efforts were and still are often undermined by corporate interests eager to access and control as much radio spectrum as possible, particularly in a 21st century world where radio spectrum is now seen as a scarce resource.

The case study used in this talk is 24 GHz, a crucial bandwidth formerly protected for passive data collection tomeasure atmospheric levels of planetary water vapor that is now licensed for commercial services by government radio spectrum auctions, thus introducing contamination into the data.

James Schwoch is professor at Northwestern University, with appointments in the Department of Communication Studies, the Program in Science and Human Culture, the Ph. D. Programs in Media, Technology, and Society and in Technology and Social Behavior, and the Ph. D. cluster in Environment, Culture, and Society. He is also a related faculty in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, the Program in Environmental Policy and Culture, and a faculty affiliate at the Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy and at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern. Schwoch conducts research and teaching in areas related to global media, media history, outer space, planetary boundaries, and media-communication-environment. He has published seven books and many articles, and his most recent book is Wired Into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier (University of Illinois Press, 2018). He is a Contributing Member with the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference.

Link to join the talk: https://meet.jit.si/Climasat_Schwoch_11May

This activity is part of the CLIMASAT ERC-StG project's series of seminars on "Data, satellites and environment".