Trevor McKellar (left), 2018-19 Graduate Fellow, works to improve drought monitoring techniques, rangeland management, and policy across the southwestern United States by incorporating soil moisture modeling into drought monitoring guidebooks. The relationship between technology and society is a subject of continuing public interest and scientific inquiry. NASA pursues a holistic systems approach to sustainable development, global issues, and their inter-relationships, relating human dimensions with natural and physical sciences (science and policy-making). The underlying objective is to realize the potential of NASA activities to benefit our peoples and to extend the horizons of commerce, science, and exploration. As a result, NASA efforts cross into the social sciences, influence policymaking, and influence project and mission management. The economic significance of technological change, as well as the impact our changing environment has, are topics of study. Historians influence public enthusiasm for a healthy civilian space program; they also detail the evolution of innovations (i.e., rocketry, remote sensing, telemetry, guidance). The entrance into space imparts new perspectives and raises new questions in international law and relations. Issues addressed by sociology include astronaut survival, mission effectiveness and the presence of humans in space. Anthropologists and geographers help us understand cultural perceptions and the human dimensions of environmental change. Political scientists are working to comprehend the formulation of space policy. Psychology is an essential requirement to understand human needs and behaviors during space operations. Space has deeply affected philosophy as the study of the truths or principles underlying all knowledge and being (or reality). Space continually has animated the study of epistemology, logic, cosmology, metaphysics, and theology. And finally, the science of management is fundamental to the success of all NASA missions.
