 So for those of you who are just joining us My name is Bill Cross. I'm the J. William Juergen Anastasia Vornas head of aeronautics and astronauts here Purdue And this is the second part of the Purdue Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series a visit from Dr. Penina Axelrad from the University of Colorado She's been our guest and they're on astro for today's pedals event So we had a nice lecture from her About global navigation satellite systems and the future and evolution of those and then we wanted to after that as a panel Discussion with her and several Purdue colleagues about what are some things that might go on in the future? How can we use these navigation and communication systems both on the ground and in space in the future? So to do this we've asked a graduate student in aeronautics and astronauts to be our moderator So my job now is to introduce him and he'll take over the rest of the panel So Sid Arth everybody calls him Sid. Supermanian is a PhD student in aeronautics and astronauts here at Purdue He entered his bachelor's degree in 2019 and his master's degree in 2021 from us here in aeronastro In addition to his studies here at Purdue. He's been an intern at NASA at SpaceX and the aerospace corporation He was also part of Purdue's hyperloop team He's actually the president and team captain for the third and fourth Competition sequences as a grad student SIDS focuses in astrodynamics and space applications with an emphasis on using signals Opportunity for orbit determination. So with that said I'll turn it over to you and the rest of the panelists Thank you, professor crossley. Well today. We've got quite a stacked panel So I'll just do a quick introduction and then I'm gonna have each of our six panelists Briefly go over what their fields of interest are As well as what they find interesting in the field of GNSS navigation and communications. So first off we have Professor I'm in Havid who is the Thomas a page professor of civil engineering His research interests are in the area and or in the area of development application of air and space more mapping systems for smart agriculture Transportation infrastructure and more then we have dr. James Garrison Dr. James Garrison is a professor for aeronautics and astronautics here at Purdue and courtesy appointment professor of east electrical and computer engineering his research and interests are in inventing new ways of using satellite navigation and communication systems for Earth observation and remote sensing and then of course our Purdue engineering distinguished lecturer Penina Axel Rad Distinguished professor at University of Colorado Boulder whose research focuses on applications of GPS technology for orbit and attitude determination surface reflections multi-path characterization and Much much more as we just learned from her talk Then we have dr. Carolyn free is who's an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics whose field is in space domain awareness and space traffic management Then we have professor in Saquon is also professor aeronautics and astronautics His focus is in autonomy and control of hybrid systems and control of multi-vehicle systems such as networks of UAVs satellites and ad hoc sensor networks And then we finally have the system professor of aeronautics and astronautics David Arnaz His field is in astrodynamics constellation design mission analysis and applied mathematics So with that said I'd like to start from That and actually we'll start from you David Dr. Arnaz, I'd like each of you to give about a one or two minute opening on what you find interesting in the field of GNSS communication and navigation And and sort of how your research applies to that field Okay, so right now what we are observing is that basically we are launching more and more satellites in the space and in fact we have planned like thousands of satellites for the next a couple of years and This thing is going to get worse and worse over time So one of the one of the particular things that is happening is that these systems are not Control Entirely on ground stations because the number is so high that we are starting to need the assistance of GPS signals Or all the telecommunications signals So as time passes these systems are going to be more and more important for our future space architectures in the space and The reason for that is also that we are going to have to integrate the GPS signals and older GNSS signals into the design of these space architectures for the following years So I think that this is going to be a massive improvement in the future and is going to To change how we manage satellites in a space Dr. May My research area is not directly linked to communication navigation or surveillance However, these CNS technologies are enabled Enablers for the autonomy for various systems. We are in the air department So our systems are typically a plane spacecraft drones and many many many of them in many cases including Urban air mobility recently and traditionally air traffic control and this in this environment without Communication navigation and the Isabella system system is not working if you consider a single vehicle system Even then these Enablers are very important. However nowadays not just single system. We Like many many system that is same time. It's not the centralized control, but everybody Wants to do what they wanted to do while satisfying safety constraints and so on and so forth so very accurate navigation and the timely communication and then on the ground in the space the surveillance system to monitor these individual vehicles behavior tools safely Managing the data operations in the airspace or in the urban environment, especially UAM. It's very very important so the This CNS technologies not only itself is very important But also in terms of application of autonomy now everybody's talking about machine learning AI and everything But still this hardware systems CNS systems are very important The briefly mentioned at the end of her talk that the integrity is very important and I'm interested in these Cyber security aspects of autonomy and now Internet of thing is everywhere My cell phone is connected to almost everybody and means that I keep telling where am I in some sense Privacy is a problem, you know the and then how we can Facilitate these advancing technologies in an intelligent way at the same time how can he hide myself ourselves in a sense that My private life is not exposed to the public in an important way. So that would be very very important Thank you dr. Free Yeah, that's so so many of the aspects which are so exciting about the systems and For me, for example the optical communication that that is really something that is up and coming they're from few experiments so far, but we have the the possibility to kind of have the higher down in grades and then Also be a lot more localized in and not just spreading the the signals around so I'm super excited about what comes next there Especially not only in the inter-satellite communication, but also the the downlink Communication there and I think we will see a lot of new exciting things there in the near future Then of course in my research on on the space debris The the Mio region has been relatively clear for many years because there was mainly GPS and then the The Russian systems now is more nations are pushing into that We also have kind of end-of-life considerations there Also kind of what Penny mentioned in her talk that we are want to have that connection to Leo Leo is already super congested So that will be super interesting because I think everybody feels encouraged now Oh, if one company can launch 2000 satellites So why don't we launch 3000 in order to get get the aims that we have so that would be exciting times And then the the other aspect is of course Communication in the deep space. There's a lot more push to go sis Luna And that was at the end in the question after you after you talk and of course we do not have the GNSS as we know it from the nearer space there and we'll see what what solutions will be there I do not think kind of the GPS around the moon. We also talked about that yesterday as the solution there But yeah, how do how do we bridge kind of that that big space between the earth and the moon or maybe all the way out to Mars and Make advances there to have the precise measurements that we need in order to establish something as like space domain awareness in that region Think of one of the things I've been thinking about which is not fully formed but the idea of Not constellations around the earth but sending out teams of satellites or maybe even UAVs Where they create their own Network and their own Sources of navigation, right? So if you you sort of leapfrog or bootstrap your way out using a combination of GNSS and other signals every time you communicate, right? You have the ability to measure range and to transfer time and if you integrate that with you know decent clocks and inertial sensors you can sort of create this Moving growing network of P&T sources and and I think that would be interesting to explore for Interplanetary or planetary or exploration or in the lunar region and I think it also has relevance in You know remote areas on the earth with UAVs or areas of GPS is denied trying to use this sort of self-propagating infrastructure Dr. Gerson yeah as Penny mentioned in her talking I mostly look at using GNSS systems for remote sensing for extracting I I'll say science measurements, but you know maybe it's broader than just basic science But you know applied measurements of the earth or properties around the earth that are related to Things that we can measure by changes in the GNSS signal So one of the things I think is interesting is that the properties of that signal were designed for one purpose which maybe you can Reduce on a fundamental lever level to measuring range and measuring speed But that enabled a lot of other measurements to be made because it basically You know through those fundamental properties we can make a lot of other measurements So where I think some interesting questions in the research related to this Are going when you get to look at other signals of opportunity there was you know mentioned in your talk about spectrum interference and You know competition for spectrum, but through looking at signals of opportunity it allows you to make Secondary measurements on a lot of these frequencies that are not allocated to that purpose and in earth remote sensing That's very important because it's a limited number of bands That you can make these measurements. So whatever You know, we mentioned the L band is so good for penetrating through through weather It's okay for going through vegetation But there's other bands that are Optimal for other purposes and they really have not been able to be used because they're already allocated for communication So I think there's a possibility of opening up a lot of new types of measurements through this secondary use of existing signals Dr. Bee So I'll just first start by saying a few words about where I'm coming from I'm coming from the area where we do Precise mapping or measurements using either a spacecraft or airborne or vehicle based systems The GPS or GNSS has made a huge impact on our Actually field in terms of allowing the possibility to produce the maps Without the need to establish ground control points, which was quite expensive So we have this added advantage by having GNSS on our mapping platforms that now we can do very precise mapping using I would say reasonably priced services So one of the exciting things here is actually is the profiler Proliferation of the applications of GNSS just to give you an example in terms of the applications here We have the continuously operating reference stations of GPS or GNSS that allows you to determine the position of your receivers within the state of Indiana 50% or more of the user those ones are in the egg field and that's really the major impact that we are impacting other fields whether it's agriculture or transportation and the exciting opportunities here right now that you have let's say millions and millions of Smart devices with GPS capabilities or GNSS capabilities They don't have the same level of performance as what we have on high-end units So the exciting peers that can you use this crowd-sourced data by having this sheer redundancy of this GNSS data? Can you really get a products or mapping products, which is very very precise? Thank you very much and Before I go any further I also just want to remind that the audience is The way that we're conducting this panel feel free if you have any I will put forth a few questions to start But if the audience has any questions feel free to chime in we don't strictly have a Q&A portion of this as well But with that being said I'll go and start off. So my first question to the panel is mainly Kind of following up from the lecture series from earlier And I know some of you are itching to kind of answer this question as well On the topic of deep space exploration CIS lunar space and navigation What are some of the the ground-breaking new developments that you all feel are coming up in the next five to ten years and What particular advancements do you think will be necessary in mapping remote sensing Formation flying and control of spacecraft to enable navigation as we expand further and further out into the solar system I'll actually start. I'll start with you again, Dr. Arnaz So one of the first challenges is going to be for instance to generate a kind of GPS But instead of orbiting the earth orbiting either the moon or orbiting for instance one of the Lagrange points Because that will enable a lot of things at that point. The challenge with that is that this or Sending a GPS a kind of constellation to the moon is going to be extremely expensive Generating a constellation around a Lagrange point. The problem is that it's not only very expensive But also it's very challenging to maintain the same level of accuracy and the level of knowledge where the satellites are at each given point because the these points are not as stable as doing Unorbit around the earth. So these are like really really big challenges that we have ahead and But I think that this is like the next step that we have to do in order to just expand our GNSS systems outside the scope of the earth Thank you, dr. Dr. Wang so Kind of specifically going into your area. I was curious to Figure out on top of the existing GPS infrastructure that we have on here What additional Developments would we need in terms of multi-vehicle systems such as mostly in this case would be satellites What advancements would we need to consider there in order to enable navigation into the solar system and other planets? GPS and in aviation GPS is one of the main sources for precise navigation and unarguably. That's true However, if you consider the not high flying airplanes, but low flying airplanes or even ground vehicles They are in and out of the environments We call the urban canyon or forest area where GPS signal is very unreliable or sometimes Denied in that case Suddenly GPS signal is available now getting weaker and weaker and not available and in and out of the building for example robots delivering The lunch boxes nowadays. We see that right then they are working very well on the open campus areas But they get close to the building. It's not so reliable just based on the GPS What they what we typically do is that it has its own onboard sensors active sensors I would say that camera sensors camera is not really active But camera sensors LiDAR laser and all sorts of sensors are searching around it looking for the obstacles and lanes and so on and so forth That's why Google car It's very cute looking at the same time. It's really looking to write it has big heads on top of the loop And it carries on this expensive heavy LiDAR systems Just augment not only the GPS, but also self-defensive So sensor fusion type is very very important and in the academic environment We are not typically using very expensive sensor or we cannot use a very heavy sensor either because our UAVs are relatively small Even though it's big, but that big is compared to that big is it's really small So payload is very important. Then if you keep adding these extra sensors make the The especially UAVs flying vehicles The not so useful in the sense that no more payload available due to the all these sensors So not only increasing hardware redundancies, but also increasing software redundancy is one of our areas my area that Okay, instead of using three different sensors, we can use only two sensors But we have a software algorithm and intelligent algorithm fuse sensor information together in such a way that it can increase redundancies without using the hardware software typically does not have any weight But a lot of efforts run by the control engineers, right? So that's very very important area and recently Penny you didn't go to our the airport hangar yet. Yeah, no So we have done a lot of experiments in that area then the inside of building we have very nice the GNT the CNS systems using cameras and it's a millimeter level Accuracy there, but certainly we could get out of the building it lost everything and Transition from even that accurate to the GPS accurate is very detrimental to the system if you do not consider When you design in autonomy algorithms, so that area is still a challenging areas And we need to look into to smooth operations of the autonomous speakers around Thank You dr. Wang dr. Free so specifically related to Space domain awareness and space traffic management in the CIS lunar domain and beyond what? advancements do you think? Expanding or having a kind of a solar system or system-wide navigation or planetary wide navigation system You think we'll any what'll enable us? And could you also speak to some of the challenges that we would face to try and implement that sort of network? Okay, I think it will leave the challenges to the people and Jim So for form space surveillance Perspective If we're going deeper into space the the earth's ground-based surveillance is not totally out of the window But we are more restricted kind of we cannot see everything Anymore so we will also have to augment the earth ground-based system with kind of space-based sensors and While I then can use for example passive optical observations having camera on my space-based sensor And then making those observations. I need to know the location of my sensor as precisely as possible and There it would be very beneficial to have something like GNSS systems there in order to kind of pin down which one is my observer otherwise. I'm just stacking Uncertainties on uncertainty is kind of I'm a certain about what I'm observing I'm certain about my own position Relative to the earth and then you see that that kind of degrades the solutions There a lot, so I think that's one of the challenges and that's why I think from surveillance perspectives That's why there is a push to to have a source in order to pin down my own location of the observer Thank You dr. Free dr. Axelred What do you feel about generally GNSS applications beyond the earth domain and and what we're seeing now and what do you think will? Does the research space hold the next five to ten years? Can I can I ask answer a slightly different question, okay? I was just gonna I wanted to go back to the idea of are we gonna really put GPS around the moon or around Mars, right? Because I think GPS makes sense around the earth because there's so many users right billions of users, right? But when you have dozens of users or hundreds of users users or even a thousand users Does it make sense to put up a constellation that's constantly? Illuminating the whole space, right? I don't I don't know the answer to that yet, but What I was naively thinking was that you're when your population is more limited you might be better off with Maybe a small number of broad transmitters and then point to point You know optical links or something where you'd actually have to point at each other and this doesn't work for surveillance It doesn't work for the things that you want to surveil, right? But it does work for the if you just have a few nodes that you need to position that can help you and and you can Know where they are and they say they stay linked Well, let's say with optical links or RF links, you know You get this point-to-point thing that gives you a framework But not necessarily full 3d coverage and you integrate that with your dynamic knowledge It seems to me like that would be an efficient way to sort of build it up slowly There's an interesting Technique like it's called liaison navigation where you have inter-satellite ranging measurements and if you're in a non-linear enough dynamic Or you know Space that you can actually get absolute positions from that or absolute knowledge from that And that's seems like you could leverage things like that in in regions where you can have these kind of more distinct dynamics No, thank you that actually is very much in theme with the question Especially kind of the what we're looking at for what we what what's within our capability within the next five to ten years? A lot of that obviously it sounds a lot more doable or or or effective Especially comparing like compared to deploying say a full-scale constellation around the moon or Mars. Thank you very much for the answer Dr. Garrison, what do you see in the field of remote sensing specifically using signals of opportunity? for applications beyond just earth using GNSS systems and networks and in general other kind of signals of opportunity that are that are present in the in the solar system or the Universe I know XNAV is a popular concept as well, but but okay, and I kind of answer a little slightly different question Because I was thinking in terms of navigation. So I will say with least with CIS lunar space you know the GPS or the GNSS transmissions Yeah, even though they're designed for users on or near the earth They do extend quite a bit beyond the earth due to the shape of the antenna patterns and all of that you can I Mean it's been demonstrated. So I think it's now operational to do GNSS navigation at geostationary orbit Which is above the GPS constellation above the GNSS constellation? There's been theoretical studies, and I'm not sure if there's been an actual demonstration of using GNSS on the moon surface. It's actually been demonstrated. Okay, actually been demonstrated. So You know, I mean it's not the optimal geometry because you're kind of looking if you visualize the geometry You're looking at the GNSS transmitter on the other side of the earth But with 120 some satellites out there from the four GNSS is that exist You should get pretty good coverage in CIS lunar space just using the existing GNSS constellation and putting the The research into better algorithms for receivers better ways of using that data and that with the advantage of you have this infrastructure that's maintained and it's You know the integrity is being monitored. It's serving you know billions of users So it's it's you know part of that the infrastructure and you could just use that out to at least the moon's orbit Beyond that you mentioned XNAV, which you're not familiar with XNAV That's using similar concepts to how GNSS works, which is basically looking at the time of travel of an electromagnetic Way from some known location to to your dope note your location Instead of using a signal that you are generating you're using a Very stable signal that's naturally produced. It's from distant Pulsars very well calibrated from these astronomical sources that are you know very long distances So, you know basically very similar to to what we're do with with GNSS on a basic level, so I think XNAV There's a lot of potential they are going you'll be on CIS lunar space So that was the answer my question all about navigation now about remote sensing many of the things with signals opportunity can also be applied To you know the planetary missions are gonna have communications links. I think an interesting historic note to all of this is that many of the things Began in interplanetary missions Radio occultation Which you know was mentioned is now part of the operational weather forecast system radio occultation was first demonstrated in the 1960s and some of the early probes to the Planets that have you know dense atmospheres like Venus and Jupiter where they basically looked at Making these measurements on the communication link back to Earth and some of the first measurements of the atmospheres Planets came from this secondary measurement along the communications link There was really no use to do this maybe the inverse of the problem you just brought There's really was no use to do that around the earth because you know, we know what the Earth's atmosphere looks like on the average Right, we want to see those very small changes in the Earth's atmosphere that we know of weather And in order to observe those very small changes You needed a lot more measurements than you'll want or two Fortunate links that happen to go through the atmosphere. So it wasn't until GNSS or GPS came about that we had this distribution of Sources that pretty much covers the whole earth and gives us favorable geometry for radio occultation So you might think things are first developed on earth and then they move out to interplanetary space but in many cases it goes the other way and I can say the same thing about the The signals opportunity device static radar. They were also measurements made In the very early days of you know lunar exploration looking at the communication links that reflect from the moon surface So I'll just say you know broadly Yeah, if there's any there's going to be communication links There's going to be frequencies being used and we could maybe do other types of science using them It's probably not gonna be the same competition for spectrum, but There still may be other advantages to reusing those those signals They're gonna put 5g on the moon Dr. Habib so Regarding your specific feel what Advancements, do you think would be necessary to? Enable mapping Precise mapping of specifically say the lunar surface because I know as a kind of a national priority in terms of the space policy There's been kind of a boat big push to get back to the moon and have a human a sustained human presence on the moon How do you see? Precise and precise mapping applications on the lunar surface fitting in to GNSS and What are the necessary advancements that are needed so I mean the key part for us to do the mapping Something beyond the location so the position is important position the mapping sensor whether it's a camera whether it's a lighter the other part is the orientation actually so the Determining the orientation in terms of azimuths or pitch and roll if you have no gravity then you need something else So basically integrating the GPS with other or positioning with other sensory data Like what in sock mentioned like with cameras and LiDAR and to improve the localization and the orientation of the sensors extremely important and that has Far-reaching applications just beyond like the planetary mapping for indoor mapping for Mapping you will it say in GNSS denied environments where we have no access to like to complete GNSS signal like in forestry in agriculture So integrating the GPS data even with weak signals with sensory data like imagery LiDAR and other mapping sensors to improve the Positioning and the orientation of your sensor is extremely extremely important. Thank you Before I guess I move on to my question. Is there anybody in the audience that wants to ask any specific question to a panel member or If not, I can I can go ahead. Okay, so my my next question and I Guess this one is just generally the panel whoever kind of feels most passionate interested in this one can kind of go First and we'll go around from there in the field of Navigation spacecraft navigation and GNSS. What are some concerns that you guys feel are kind of cropping up? I know from the lecture earlier. We learned that you know, there's a GNSS and GPS specifically has led to a lot of things that we didn't know were possible on the onset of GPS Now we talked about a lot of the benefits of that But what are some unfortunate? Maybe not so great side effects that might be cropping up maybe some not so great actors and how will they What are some problems that might arise from this kind of Renaissance of GPS availability data and navigation that we have So anybody want to start that or I guess I can point out Yeah, nobody knows how to use a map anymore Professors complain about this all the time, right? So like I do think it is hurting our brain development in terms of spatial You know ability to visualize things spatially because you go out somewhere And you don't even think about where what direction it is or anything like that So I think we're getting worse at that. I know I am I Can certainly feel that too? I Think I totally agree with this one and I think Going back to the statement that you mentioned like what would happen if our navigation system stopped working That's really the big big concern That is a huge risk. Yes, you know another thing and I'm saying I'm still talking about this from a mapping perspective Right now actually We have the position sometimes we don't really realize how accurate or inaccurate the position is so I think this is really Very critical that you have to really make sure that we have this and basic understanding whether the signal we get or the Positions we get is accurate enough for the application At hand, so that's that's really very important, especially when we come to this white use of navigation system the last thing which is also affecting my field a lot is that Sometimes actually we just are users of GPS signal we get the GPS position After integration with inertial navigation system say this is your position in the orientation and we have just okay That's a predicted accuracy But when we do the mapping actually figure out that the information is not really as accurate as we think it is so Having standards to really clearly specify the quality of the products That's extremely important action to make sure that you are using the right data for the right application I Think I have a question actually back to the panel manager Jim O'Penney who are working in that so There has been a lot of talk about the different satellite system using up different radio frequencies and how that impacts kind of radio Astronomy and these things so What's what's the the negative outcome not only of the GNSS, but of the radio frequency use of the satellites Yeah, when I give my talk on signals of opportunity to introduce it and saying you know the radio spectrum It's it's like very valuable real estate There's a finite amount of it and you know everybody wants to use some of it So think of it as you know a finite resource That's being used up But I'll say a challenge in that is can we use it more efficiently and You know and I guess on the astronomy where it would kind of limited because we're you know, we're not controlling what What the source is and we you know, we're seeing very weak sources and in some aspects of remote sensing and radiometry that's also the case but if I I talked just in terms of of Navigation communications and active remote sensing all of these involved just Transmitting an electromagnetic wave, you know governed by Maxwell's equations But they evolved this kind of really different Problems and different approaches different languages Are there you know the basic research level they're more fundamental ways of designing systems to optimally use the spectrum that's available So that's maybe a direction. I would say that that You know could be fruitful because there is a finite resource just like you know many other things were running out of it Yeah, my question was is related to the original question, but and you mentioned this in your lecture There there was obviously pushback from the NSF about putting the tool that you had a Putting the tool before the problem. Was there other pushback? I guess Historically to the infrastructure of GNSS on the whole and like can you anticipate some of those? I guess some of those Reactions in the future as we look to expand this this infrastructure to this lunar space Okay, I guess I'll try That's a great question actually so my advisor in grad school was Parkinson right and he he was constantly Having to defend the project we were working on which was not GPS. It was actually gravity probe B He described that every year with a budget would get cut for gravity probe B And it was called a Washington Monument because what that meant was that people were so committed to actually doing this mission that when that Got cut they would put it back in the budget, right? So the Congress they would sort of cut it knowing that Congress wasn't really going to kill the project And I think GPS was sort of set up that way too, right? So by having this dual use civil military Everybody was pretty vested in it and and even I think when the budgets were tight it kept getting funded or supported It wasn't you know lavish. There were times it actually there was a time when it was originally supposed to have 24 satellites And they cut it down to 18 to save money But after a while it's just like it's too close to the bone You might not always get four satellites. It went back to 24 So so it was actually people who put these things together were very politically savvy and they knew Sort of what hooks to put in it that would make sure that it stayed popular with representatives from every state and You know going forward I it's a good. I don't see that the There need to be future investments, but I don't see a massive, you know influx of more support for it Specifically maybe for the lunar area. There's different things. I'm gonna let somebody else answer But what I've been thinking is of course if one nation then puts it up There's the push that the other nations are following So I think for for kind of Europe. It was always kind of a big thing like okay We have US and Russia So if you want to be independent if I don't know they butt head against us and we're squeezed in the middle Then that pushed that and then of course we have the Rejuvenation that so I think it's also yeah, one nation doesn't get gets kind of civil and Defense related advantage and then the other nations are pushing pushing back and I think That then again with the limited resources and limited space that can create some Conflict there in that sense I actually kind of want to follow up with that to Dr. Wang and Dr. Arnaz as well Just kind of continuing along the theme of what general challenges do you see Regulate regulatory wise such as through legislation or geopolitical with The rise of navigation systems and kind of the deployment of of new navigation systems by by by countries And also kind of going on our theme of you know various challenges such as in Location denied environments as well What are some of the kind of challenges that you see from maybe more the policy side that? Maybe we haven't run into yet or have not been implemented In a good enough way to address some of these rising issues So at least the first mission that were launched in space. They didn't have any restriction regarding Either signals or anything else The problem is that one thing that people start to realize is that signals get interfered with other signals So for at least from my perspective, it was already a miracle that somehow we acknowledge that that was a problem And we try to find some kind of policy regarding that So for right now for instance, we have the problem of signals And we also have the border the problem right now of position of satellites because right now We are lacking also policies about that. In fact right now everyone can place a satellite wherever they want The only restriction is that you have to collide to something else because that would be crazy But apart from that you basically can place anything on a space So the problem is basically the first person or the first company that launches a satellite unit space is basically earning or gaining access and just them to that region of space So this is something that was already happening for signals However, the advantage that we have with signals is that that was at least regulated This is something that we have to advance also for a how we place satellites in the space because the density of satellites is getting really really high and Basically now we have for instance a really big companies launching thousands of satellites that are basically Buying regions of space because they are preventing other missions to have access But we are not only seeing that because they just are placed on those regions. They are also Taking these frequencies for themselves and Avoiding other people other companies or agencies to have access To these regions and these frequencies So this is something that even if right now we have like a very small number of policies around around that We have to expand those because the number of agents Gaining access to space in the close future is going to increase very rapidly So we will have to make sure that the sustainability of a space is going to continue for future generations Kind of continuing on that theme as well This this next question is kind of a bit more of an opinion question Seeing some of the kind of the as dr. Anas mentioned the growing constellations in space as well as other kind of cases such as the the seabed and altimeter conflict and the the Dr. Actually mentioned give a brief mention about legato as well Do you feel that some of these new advancements such as you know the increase in Satellites in Leo. Do you feel that the the benefits? Outweigh some of the risks that are being created with these in specifically in the field of communication navigation mapping Or do you feel like that? You know that the regulation is not adequate kind of in addition to What dr. Anas said regarding you know needing more regulation just on the number of satellites placed in space. I Think that the problem is not that We have to be constrained in the number of launches that we do is the way we do those lunges How we select where those satellites are located? Because right now is like the Wild West out of space and we have to like be like clear of what we do what to do Let's imagine that if we want to just park our car in a parking lot What happens if everyone passed their car wherever they wanted the problem is that first is going to be very difficult to find a Spot and later if you want to move a car it's going to be difficult to move the car around the parking So we have to do something similar to a space So it's not a problem of that. There is no space for that it's a problem that we have to agree of what is a Sensitive manner of organizing a space and this is also something that is going to be very important in the future Another thing is that we have been starting to observe some Satellites that are starting to bully other satellites. So this is something that has been observed in geo because the Positions are very few in number So this is something that we also have to create policies and on how to fight against these kind of behaviors Because right now it's very difficult to try to fight again against a satellite that is doing this kind of action against other company or or Country so we will have to work on that also regarding policy Yeah, I think tagging on to that the the short answer to your question is No, the policies we have in place are not adequate if we are thinking about kind of regulation Not only on the on the frequencies, but kind of on on the locations end of life considerations the polity the policies are kind of from the 70s and from the 80s that are currently in into kind of the outer space treaty or the moon treaty and stuff and Kind of the satellites especially in Leo that there was a very different deal back then and we have not been able internationally To adapt those policies. We don't keep talking about the the 25 year rule and stuff and that's all stuff and we know that's not sufficient and it's not sustainable, but We we could not we have not been able in our international committees to move beyond that I think another threat that has been coming up in recent years is also weaponization of space that we're seeing again. We have witnessed the anti-satellite test. There has been a Cascade of them. Yes, as well as India and other other nations Russia as of as of late We do not have any policies for that either While several nations are also pushing active debris removal Active removal means removing a satellite that is doesn't want to be removed. I can also do that was an active satellite So I think weaponization of space That's yeah, we will see a lot more of that unfortunately in the future and we have no regulations in place for that either Dr. Axelrod so just kind of the Going more in towards the the actual it From what Dr. Free explained it seems like we're still kind of in the Wild West of space Applications and regulation. Do you feel that the current approach? will yield More opportunities in the long run or do we this does it seem like we're really headed for something disastrous if if you know proper navigation constraints and and applications such as the Spectrum debate that we just talked about Kind of controlling that finite resource if that if that's not properly rained in Do you feel that again the the risks kind of outweigh the benefits in the near future? Do you see that happening kind of sooner or later? I'm gonna stick with the net with the non spectrum question part of the question I mean, I agree you I agree with what Carolyn said that the the way that they're deciding who gets to launch what and what orbits is is Inadequate and and that needs to be addressed and there's astrodynamics committees that have talked about doing it I think there's definitely time for action on that because we will see a Detrimental effects of it for sure. There's no I think that's without question. I don't know how you push on to do that though that's You need to find a different panel for that one But I mean, I think we don't I mean, I think it needs to be coordinated differently the the requirements for demonstrating it and the broader risk Profile needs to be evaluated differently. I think it's important And it won't become urgent until something really bad happens. Unfortunately, but Dark Harrison, do you have any thoughts on the general risks of? Bad actors or other other things in GNSS and navigation going forward Number show about bad actors. I'm one of the things I am you'll think about this You know at some point right what what type of regulatory Structural need internationally and I'm wondering You know with aviation, I mean that's very tightly controlled even between you know countries that generally don't talk to each other Nicely, you know this regulations and there's there's an infrastructure there and you can you know safely fly between you know most points in the world One of what it takes at some point. I think we'll need to have something like that where you know You need a license to launch a satellite and orbit debris and collisions and all those are parts of the analysis of that license and it's You know a rigorous process And you know, I don't know maybe that won't come about till there's a really bad bad incidents on time and that motivates everyone to do something That's usually how things work, right? More reactive Yeah, just just take it on to that. I think what we are missing what we're having air travel And also even with the UAVs in the meantime is that we are adopting things into a national law, right? I mean we have We have kind of you apply for the license to to launch from kind of the country you're launching from But many of the of the regulatory things that have been suggested in the scientific communities and some of the international Organizations they have not been adopted into a national law of any of the spacefaring countries And I think yeah, if there would be some some leaders there going going forward Yeah, we could do a lot a lot more because every country is allowed to have their own legal framework And can control that and we do not have to meddle too many of the international waters And then we can do kind of adjacent countries like we do in air travel You know the challenge with space though, right is you you can't limit them outside your boundary, right? The satellites go where they're gonna go and so it's I think it's an interesting philosophical question I guess maybe cyber is similar in some ways, right because it doesn't respect boundaries The same way aviation is sort of constrained to I suppose but yeah, that's a part I don't get how to solve that one So we have about 10 minutes remaining so I kind of want to do a Rapid fire around kind of any on a high note through each of our panelists I want to ask in your specific field of research or and through all the projects and various things that all of you have What specific? Technology or project do you think that you're working on now that you that makes use of GNSS Do you think will that excites you and think will have a positive impact on on society and humanity and you know generally What do you think in your specific field through G and the GNSS enables will be able to Benefit humanity, so we'll just kind of go and then on this last one. So we'll start with you doctor So, I mean one of the key areas that we are starting to get interested is using connected and autonomous Vehicles actually the data coming from connected and autonomous vehicles as a mapping system So currently most of our mapping is done by dedicated systems which are quite expensive They have I mean they are really not as expensive as they used to be a few years ago Thanks to GPS or GNSS, but the ultimate goal or basically is that can we really use consumer grade sensors like what we have on cars like Connected autonomous vehicle to do that really precise mapping and can we really use the huge redundancy by the large amount of data with the low-quality sensors to get as Precise mapping as we get from high our high-end systems So maybe I can ask also one question related to this to the panel that How far are we from saying that with these consumer grade? GNSS receivers like what we have on cars on a smartphone. Can we really reach? Submeter or let's say centimeter level. Is this something that could happen or that's really far-fetched Actually, so we'll have somebody answer doctor. He's question and we'll kind of come back to the next thing Does anybody want to talk about I guess what will enable sub centimeter or millimeter level GPS accuracy? and Centimeter Consumer grade devices I would say you could do it I mean, I think somebody should the thing that the limits of phone is the antennas lousy right mostly Maybe in some environments, it's hard, but if you integrate it with inertial I think you do it Why not But is also one I mean the high-end receivers they make use of reference networks, right? So once we're connected with the phone, maybe if the yeah PPP is gonna come down. It's built into Galileo, and they're gonna it's gonna be real-time PPP. I think Thank you Kind of going back to the the initial question that we as you wrap up Dr. Garrison what application excites you most about GNSS for the near-term future for the Humanities society's benefit that I'm working on. Yes, okay Well, I'll say maybe go a little beyond just GNSS But maybe use of GNSS techniques with other frequencies and I'll say that as to P band signals of opportunity and P band is lower frequency than L band L band is about you know one to two gigahertz P band is below 500 megahertz So the wavelength and P band is about a meter versus GNSS is about 20 centimeters And why that is so interesting is It penetrates into the soil it can penetrate through vegetation Penetrate through weather and so it's very useful for measuring Anything that's you know obscured by vegetation or underground specifically looking at water content in the ground Existing techniques in remote sensing using microwaves using P bands are really not feasible from space Because of the interference that we talked about and also just physical Optics will require an antenna 10 15 meters using Radiometric techniques, so Been involved in in the development of signals opportunity using P band We're about to have a space born demonstration at the end of this year and why isn't so important is because this the water it's stored in the soil is What? directly impacts Agriculture directly impacts vegetation to use a term root zone soil moisture It also is an important part of the water cycle for weather because it's the interface between what's in the atmosphere And then what's stored underground and also can be useful for Things like predicting floods predicting droughts So it's a lot of societal benefits It's one of the most important environmental variables that is measured by remote sensing Existing techniques at L band and higher frequencies can only sense the first about five centimeters of the soil And so this is a new measurement. That's not been able to have been made from space before and if we can make it from satellite Vantage the satellites is you can make global measurements on a very high frequency, right? You can't do that with with drones. You can't do that with in situ measurements So that's why I would say it'd be the one thing I'm working on that think would have the Biggest societal benefit. Thank you Dr. Extra next and I just pass on this one. No, that's fine. Yeah, we're kind of running closer time to you. Yeah, that's free Okay Yeah, I mean, I think There are several aspects. I mean, I'm super excited about this lunar and has space surveillance there and they're relying on something like GNSS type type things. I'm not sure that benefits Society and world as a whole but that's why I'm excited and then of course the debris problem of all the constellations are as as well I mean just I think With with those Leo arms of of the GNSS constellations I think that will put more stress on the system again That's not very positive But I find it exciting because we need solutions there we need them soon Otherwise everything will just crash into each other and that's the end of it So I think exciting times ahead. No, I certainly think as well We may not directly see the the the benefits of it, but it's more of a problem where You'll you'll really regret it if we didn't solve it. So so that would notice. Yeah, absolutely So it's definitely just as important. Dr. Mike So far we discussed about the benefits from GNSS systems and since our society getting more rely on such systems any misuse abuse could cause a Covid life endemic in our life So my research area is a from my research perspective Reliability the security is very important aspect of it again We shared a lot of information together intentionally or an unintentionally That can cause the the door that can be exploited by bad Entity, right? Then the how can you make sure that such things can be can happen with Extreme cost if not completely eliminated so that basically practically infeasible. How can it do it and Once we get that then the the The intelligent transportation systems smart cities really Realized and I can see my imagination is that within a couple of decades it could be possible But again, we have to resolve this issue. Otherwise, this could be just Thank you Dr. Dr. on us and just a minute what in about one minute total. Do you think what research do you think? that you're working on currently will have a Good societal impact that you know makes use of GNSS navigations and communication systems So for instance right now I am working in satiric in a space traffic management But in the sense of how to create a passively safe Constellation on a space architectures. So the idea is to convince a for instance the department of call commerce of Other policymakers that we have to create a series of slots on a space in such a way that if new Agent wants to launch a new satellite on a space they can provide them like a set of positions In which they can fulfill their mission, but they still be safe with respect to the other Satellites in the architecture. So the idea with that is that we need like really good navigation systems Because every time that one of these satellites skates outside of these safest lots We have to track it very well because that's going to alter the safety of the older satellites in the show The other reason is that imagine that for some reason a break up event happens So we have now a cloud of debris that is going to affect the whole shell and all the altitudes below that Breakup event. So now the problem is what do we do with the motion of these satellites that are going to be affected? We have to move probably a lot of them So how we do that safely how we control how these satellites are moving and how we organize this motion of all the satellites So this is what I am doing right now. Thank you very much doctor on us and with that I Were I think we're at the top of our time. We are said I'm just gonna take over I was gonna thank you as well So if those you thank you for joining us online in person, let's thank Sid I'm in Habib Jim Garrison, Penny Axelred, Garland Free, Insik Hong and WDarnas our panelists today Thank you for joining us today and have a good afternoon and I don't know what else to say Thank you very much