Project Outwatch

Overview

Project Outwatch was commissioned by the World Research Council on behalf of the World Cooperative Assembly in R286.3.14 to explore extra-solar bodies and phenomenon with a priority for research developements, resources, and identification of future opportunities for all nations.

Goals

There are six goals of Project Outwatch - four primary goals and two secondary goals.

Identification of Research Priorities

This primary goal is deliberately broad to provide Project Outwatch expeditions with flexibility and autonomy in carrying out their important tasks.

Deployments shall identify research priorities that will progress the state of research and provide invaluable information in the discovery of new knowledge. Research priorties include novel materials and physical interactions, significant signals and patterns of unknown cause, phenomena that provide novel experimental opportunities, study of geological and extra-planetary features and movements, and observation of phenomena that may provide significant value to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

Identification of Life

This goal - often touted in the press as the main or only goal and largely considered the most exciting - aims to find evidence of life on other planets or in interplanetary environments. While the WRC has given this goal priority status, few expeditions have targeted locations with likely conditions for life. The classification of life is a difficult scientific and philosophical puzzle.

Identification of Security Issues

While the WCA considers that the most likely security issues are likely to arise from a lack of international cooperation at home or potential impacts from bodies within the home system, the possibility of extra-solar security concerns remains, including collisions from extra-solar objects, gamma-emissions from solar bodies, and biological threats. In addition, new materials, environments and physical observations may enable the development and testing of new security solutions, keeping the world even safer.

Identification Economic Opportunities

While the WCA and national governments have enacted successful policies to ensure citizens generally enjoy a good standard of living, new technologies and abundant resources will allow for the possibility of greater quality of life by decreasing scarcity and employing new capabilities.

Identification of Inhabitable Locations

While not a primary goal, the World Cooperative Assembly and the World Research Council both acknowledge that we have only one, fragile planet, and that through unavoidable environmental catastrophes or cooperative failure the delicate balance could be disrupted. It is therefore prudent to identify both opportunities for other places of human habitation, as well as testing grounds to understand the strengths and limits of human living environments. The human species is vibrant and resourceful and undertaking this challenge can help us understand ourselves and provide us with greater opportunities for collective success and survival.

Test of Current and Innovative Technology

The scale and challenges of Outwatch expeditions will provide a great opportunity to engage with a secondary goal - to test out fleet capabilities, including hardware performance, software reliability and personnel resiliance, allowing us to understand the capabilities and opportunities of technologies both in space and on the ground.