  Capitalizing on the enthusiasm about space science in the general public, our
goal as an interdisciplinary group of scholars is to design and teach a new
team-taught interdisciplinary course, "Philosophy and Science of Space
Exploration (PoSE)" at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where we
currently teach. We believe that this course will not only help overcome
disciplinary silos to advance our understanding of space and critically examine
its ethical ramifications, but also will better educate the public on how
science works and help overcome the science skepticism that has unfortunately
become more prominent in recent years. In what follows, we first juxtapose two
seemingly contradictory trends: increased interest in space science on the one
hand and increased skepticism about and distrust in science on the other. We
then turn to how our anticipated Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration
(PoSE) course will develop tools that could dismantle distrust in science while
also enhancing the scientific and philosophical understandings of space
science. We explain the content and the questions we will examine in POSE and
conclude with how we will measure our success and progress.
