Mars will be settler colonial (unless…): Maya Cruz, ‘(Machine) Learning How to See Like a Rover: Feminist Objectivity and the Demonic Ground of Martian Sand’, Catalyst, 11, 2, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Mars will be settler colonial (unless…): Maya Cruz, ‘(Machine) Learning How to See Like a Rover: Feminist Objectivity and the Demonic Ground of Martian Sand’, Catalyst, 11, 2, 2025

20Oct25

Abstract: Mars has long been a space onto which fantasies of colonization have been projected in both popular and scientific imaginaries. Amidst these colonizing visions, can there be a feminist science of Mars? In this paper, I examine an emerging technology being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed to increase the capacity for future rovers to conduct autonomous scientific research on Mars using machine learning and computer vision, called the Soil Property and Object Classifier (SPOC), as a case study in crafting feminist objectivity. I bring together feminist studies, critical race and ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, and postcolonial studies approaches to the study of science and technology to analyze the ways in which SPOC evidences how contemporary techniques used to engineer autonomous scientific discovery on Mars through machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision reproduce and redescribe the logics, imaginaries, and power relations of US settler colonialism in new technological terms. Ultimately, my work aims to gesture towards the possibilities that emerge for crafting a feminist objectivity of Mars when we situate scientific knowledge through the racialized conditions of its production.

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