 Initiating these dialogues for space sustainability, it is more important now than ever. The country is setting a good example through adopting best principles and best practices. Three, with soft power comes really strong leadership. Two, in the space community, we're aware of how fragile the space environment is. One, I'm Crystal Hazelton, Director of the Space Application Programs at the Secure World Foundation. As the conference chair for this year's Summit for Space Sustainability, I am so pleased to have more than 650 registered participants. Welcome. I know there are many competing demands for your time and attention, and I'm incredibly pleased that you've decided to join us today. We've got a lot of great content packed into the next few days. The Secure World Foundation launched this conference two years ago with the intention of being the premier forum for discussing issues around space sustainability. The only one focused on all aspects and areas of the topic and with an eye toward solutions, problem solving, and the future. Given ongoing events around the world, we considered canceling this year's event and waiting until we can all meet in person. But much like I stated at the beginning of the last Summit for Space Sustainability, space activity has not stopped. Rockets are still launching. Governments are still supporting science missions and human explorations and writing regulations. Industry is still working to improve services to its customers. So here we are to talk about emerging trends, to explore unique international and national perspectives, and to examine aspects of issues that honestly don't get enough attention. Before we go any further, I would be remiss not to extend a warm thank you to our sponsors. Our digital content sponsors are here today, virtually of course, to demonstrate their commitment to improving space sustainability. They are a diverse group of organizations that showcase just how important this topic is to the entire space community, and we are deeply grateful for their support. So thank you to our returning sponsors Astroscale, ESA, ULA, Space Linguistics, the Space and Sustainability Initiative at CYU Boulder, and also welcome and thanks to our new sponsors, BHO Legal, Leo Labs, Clifford Chance, KPMG, and ComSpok. We are also excited to highlight some great digital content from them, so please check out our website, swfsummit.org for more information. We also have a really generous set of media sponsors, GVF, Sat News, SpaceWatch Global, and Space News. I encourage all of you to engage with and subscribe to the great sources of information available from all of our media sponsors. Next, I want to highlight our young professional content from this year. The pandemic has really made networking engagement by young professionals extremely difficult. That's why this year we've added a lot of content providing opportunities for young professionals to engage on space sustainability topics. It's my privilege to announce the winners of our student essay competition. It was with great difficulty that we selected four winners from among the many insightful and well-researched responses. Congrats to Renata, Nathaniel, Andrew, and Cervante. Check out their submissions on our website. Thank you to all of you who contributed via your registration fee. That's part of what made this essay competition possible. In addition, I'd like you to check out our Next Gen video series highlighting a range of talented young professionals who all work with our sponsor organizations. You can learn about their backgrounds and current work in this engaging content that is also available on the Summit website. Finally, we invite anyone who registered as a young professional to attend one of our mentoring sessions that are being offered on Thursday. You should have already received your invitation if you're signed up as a young professional. If not, check your spam and let us know and we'll get that to you. We're holding two sessions, one at 9 a.m. Eastern and one at 7 Eastern, to accommodate as many schedules as possible. We have a really exciting lineup of mentors for you to engage with, so be sure to sign up via that registration email. Next, I have an exciting announcement to make about our Summit. Tomorrow, we will not only hear a candid interview from Tori Bruno, President and CEO of the United Launch Alliance. We will also be hearing an additional keynote from Bavia Lull, who serves as a senior advisor to the NASA administrator for budget and finance. She was the senior most White House appointee and acting chief of staff at NASA for the first hundred days of the Biden administration. The agency has transitioned to administration under Joe Biden. Before that, she served as part of the transition agency review team for both NASA and the Department of Defense. So as you can imagine, this is an exciting opportunity to hear about sustainability from the new administration. That will be tomorrow at 12.15, extending our day just slightly, so if you're planning to sign off, we have extended the agenda to accommodate this keynote by Ms. Lull. And then finally, we have a little bit of housekeeping. We choose to host this as a live event in part to make sure there would be a chance for interaction between our participants and our speakers, limited as we are in this virtual environment. Every panel has time set aside for various audience interventions, including polls and Q&A. All you need to do is click the link located below the live stream feed, or you can go directly to menti.com and enter the code 33235686. You can see it right there on your screen. In fact, you can participate in our very first poll of the day right now, so be sure to check that out. Next, we're going to turn to our opening panel. In this panel, we are going to explore the topic of Earth's observation data and technology and climate change. To lay the groundwork for this conversation, we have our first spotlight speaker of the day, Walid Abdeladi. He will be giving us an overview of the topic and some food for thought for our panelists to consider. Hi, my name is Walid Abdeladi. I'm the director of CERES, the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences. And with regard to the question, can space do more to support action on climate change? The first part of my answer to that is, space has already done plenty. But the second part is, yes, of course, it can do more to support action. As far as what it has done, the space-based perspective has provided foundational knowledge and information. In other words, the data to help us understand climate change and inform action. And it does this in part by allowing us to access otherwise inaccessible places. The Arctic, the middle of the Sahara Desert, the Amazon Rainforest. Now, we can go to these places, but to observe large-scale behavior really requires satellite observations. The second is, the space-based perspective allows us to see the world in ways our eyes can't. By using the full part of the electromagnetic spectrum, ultraviolet, microwave radiation, thermal infrared, in addition to visible, we're able to quote-unquote see things that our eyes otherwise couldn't. And the third is perspective. The large-scale perspective of global processes in the Earth system and the interactions among the elements of the Earth system. So, what have space-based observations told us with regard to climate change that have helped us understand the situation? Well, I'm just going to give you a few examples that illustrate the points I made before about how we observe from space and what that enables us to do. The first is the shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. We're all aware that over the last several decades Arctic sea ice has been shrinking substantially. We know this because of satellite observations. If we physically went a few hundred miles above the Earth and looked down at the Arctic, we wouldn't see the sea ice. The clouds would be in the way, but because we measure it with microwave, or at microwave wavelengths, the microwaves penetrate the clouds and we're able to see the ice below and its behavior. And so we can see in the late 70s compared to just last year substantial losses of Arctic sea ice cover. Another area that's close to home for me is wildfires. Again, the satellite observations allow us to see fires on a continental scale, their number, their duration, their intensity, and subsequently the fire damage that's done, the spatial extent of these fires. Looking from space helps us get a sense of the behavior of these fires and their evolution with time. Both evolution within a fire incident, but evolution from year to year as to how much these are growing, how more widespread they're becoming. Another area from a global perspective standpoint is sea level rise. Using satellites, we've measured sea level rise reliably since the early 1990s. And what you see here is the spatial distribution of sea level rise. So we can estimate global rise, but also how it varies from location to location, which is dependent on where the energy is being absorbed in the ocean, where the water and ice that are causing the seas to rise, in addition to thermal expansion, are coming in from. And the satellite perspective by orbiting the earth repeatedly over and over for decades tells us the regional characteristics, which makes a huge difference in the implications for coastal regions. A few inches, a difference of a few inches has tremendous implications for people worldwide. And then this last example is really a great illustration of interaction between components of the earth's system. This is the carbon dioxide uptake from vegetation. And what you see is CO2, carbon dioxide, overlaid on the annual vegetation patterns. And you can see a spring arrives in the northern hemisphere. We can watch the CO2 uptake by the vegetation in the northern hemisphere. And as fall comes, we watch the increase in CO2 as there is less vegetation to take up that carbon dioxide. So the space-based perspective has already told us much, but it's got a lot to tell us going forward. Now ultimately, the solutions to the climate change challenge is going to depend on policy and sound decision making. The choices we make as a society. And those policies and those choices need data to be made in an informed way. And that, again, is what the space-based perspective tells us. So what can these observations do in the future? Well, one, we can continue watching the climate change story unfold, whether it be manifested through rising oceans, increased fire, changes in hurricane behavior, you know, just plain warming, the implications for vegetation, whatever. The space-based perspective allows us to look at the global scale and understand how that story is unfolding. We can also, through new investments, make new kinds of observations that can help us get at the root of these changes, but also inform the implications of our choices so that we can make our choices better or provide information on the implications of our choices. These data improve models. When we observe and understand, we get better at predicting. So taking these data and understanding the processes at work and improving our models accordingly allows us to better predict the future, better understand what we're in for, and better prepare for what's coming and better mitigate the changes that will happen. So ultimately, this information through the direct observations or how we inform our models will inform policy, will inform our choices. And the good news is we've got the technology, we've got the scientific expertise and capability. What we need is the investment, and we've been lucky that there have been robust investments for quite some time, but when compared to the implications of the climate change challenge and the costs associated with it, those investments have been comparatively small. So with increased investments, we'll be able to do more. We'll be able to better position ourselves to meet the challenges that are undoubtedly coming. And I'm going to leave you with a quote, a pretty powerful one in my view, by Socrates from 400 BC, even then he knew, man must rise above the earth to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives. It was true then, it was true today, and it'll be true tomorrow. So thank you for your attention, and thank you to the organizers for putting this session together, and to the other members of this session contributing on the panel. I appreciate being a part of it. Well, that certainly got us off to a good start. I think it comes as no surprise to anyone that space technologies can contribute significantly to global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and that indeed these technologies have already been instrumental in helping scientists gain a better picture of the urgency of climate change. But what we're here to discuss today is the knowledge and the technology gaps. What's needed? What's next in terms of new technologies in terms of how we process and manage current data to ensure that humanity has a full understanding of the problem and is able to take informed action? To try to answer those questions, I will turn to my panel. While that's up, just a quick reminder that we do have a poll on Mentimeter, so please follow the link just below your streaming feed to participate. I am incredibly honored to introduce this panel. It's not often that I get starstruck, but we have a really incredible lineup for you today. To start with, Marion D. Obtain is a metrologist with long experience in forecasting and research into the African monsoon and weather systems. Following a period as the director of meteorology at the National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Senegal, she is currently a program manager at the WMO Africa Regional Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lori Garver is CEO of Earthrise Alliance, a philanthropic initiative established to fully utilize Earth science data to combat climate change. In her illustrious career, she was also the deputy administrator of NASA and the executive director at the National Space Society, among many other roles. Steve Homburg is chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. He has served as the lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the UN and was recognized as one of the scientists contributing to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, we have Delma Cruz, who is the former deputy national secretary at the Secretary of Policies and Programs of Science Technology at the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication in Brazil. And in 2015, she was elected vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Welcome to my panel. Wonderful. Hello, everyone. Great. So you're all... Morning. Morning. So you're all live now. I'm actually going to start with Ms. Crook. The IPCC is currently undertaking the sixth assessment report on science related to climate change. I'd like you to start by telling us what role does Earth observation play in this process. And in your opinion, what has changed since the last assessment report? Okay. Thank you very much, Christo. And before I start, let me also congratulate the winners of the context. We really need all stimulating young people to get interested in the subject. Also, thanks for the opportunity to be here. And I think that Willie has really set up the scene for this discussion here. He said that we already have a lot of remotely sensed data, but this can do more. Satellite information can do more. And we see this increasingly with the IPCC assessment reports. So if I can give just a little bit of the background, the IPCC does not do the research itself. It relies on the assessment of a broad range of literature that is relevant for the... for climate change, including the physical biases of climate change, impacts adaptation and vulnerability, and mitigation of climate change. So we have these three big working groups in the IPCC that work in the assessment of the literature worldwide. And this is why it's so important that we have, you know, publication, scientific publications, information from the social economics and technological also information. So if we look, increasingly, IPCC has been more than 30 years doing these assessments. We are in the sixth cycle now. So if we go back and see how it improves and how much it relies on remotely sensed data, not only to improve the model capacity to project future climate change, but also on many of the relevant points that we need has put forward, including the shrinking of the sea ice cover, the fires in terms of their intensity, their frequency. We know that, you know, climate change projects with climate change increasing. We project more fires, greater intensity and so on. And remotely sensed data is incredible too, that we can use to look at this and look at chiefs and the trend of the observations. Okay, but to respond to your question objectively, I will, I think that I, I sought to consult working group one that works on the physical basis of climate change. And why is that? It's because their assessment report is coming up for approval of the 195 governments now in July and August. So we are going to have new information coming up. And from the point of view of remotely sensed data, working group one selected five points where they see improvements. So I'm going to just, you know, highlight those points very quickly. One is the improved understanding of the drivers and their role in the earth's energy imbalance. So we know that, for instance, some publications that just most satellite and in situ observations independently show an approximate double of this unbalance from mid-2005 to mid-2019. So it's just this imbalance in the incoming flux to the outgoing one. The second one is the closure of the earth's energy budget through atmosphere, ice, ocean, land monitoring. So remotely sensed information is really important when we look at this energy budget because we want to include information from the atmosphere, aerosols, greenhouse gases, surface albedo, clouds, vegetation, land use, patterns. So remotely sensed data has a huge contribution for us to assess this. The third one is on the closure of the sea level budget, which aims to reduce the current uncertainties on sea level change and the individual components for this change. So when we reduce uncertainties of sea level change, it improves our understanding of the processes involved in causing this global sea level rise and the regional variability. So this is the third one when we talk about closure of both the energy budget and sea level budget. We aim to reduce uncertainties and throughout the assessments of the IPCC, you see this very clearly. So one of the real challenges we have is to really improve our ability to project the future and see the changes and remotely sensed data is there. The first issue is also narrowing the range of equilibrium climate sensitivity, including through improved observation constraints on feedback. And we see, for instance, that in the year four of 2007, we did have this range of equilibrium climate sensitivity using a model which was the CMIP3 changed in the assessment of 2014 using another model based on another characteristics. And now in AR6, we are going to even have an improved modeling approach, which will help us to narrow the range of equilibrium in climate sensitivity. And finally, the last one is the growing field of constraining climate projections. We are talking about this new area of emergent constraints that is coming up, combining these emerging constraints and relating them with observations that could reduce uncertainty surrounding future climate. On the last two points that were made by working group one, and I think that this is very general, I think that the points I made were very technical in nature. But two important issues they highlighted. One is the importance of remotely sensed data for the quality of reanalysis and the challenges that are linked to the continuity and also homogeneity of the measurements for doing that. So we see that remotely sensed data needed to ensure this continuity so that we can do reanalysis, looking from past information and observations. But we need to have continuity of this. So we see that the need for the programs to have continuity and consistency. So I want to come back to that point. So I think what we'll do, I'm going to go to the next question. I'd like to come back to this idea of the quality of data, because I think that's really going to be key for our audience to understand that challenge. Okay, that's perfect. First, just a small point, Crystal. And it's also the regional information. It's really the importance of having this really, really going from the road to the smaller scale. So those are the two points that your working group finally made. Thank you. That's actually the perfect segue into our next speaker, Ms. Kane. I wanted to ask you about climate services for adaptation and how they're generated through the Global Framework for Climate Services and specifically about that situation in Africa. What are the unique challenges that you face there? Thank you, Crystal. Do you hear me? My internet is going on and off. I hope you can hear me. It's a pleasure to be part of this climate change. It's definitely inevitable. We are already in it with climate variability and increase of extreme events, both in frequency and intensity. All parties are working to keep to the Paris Agreement and keep the temperature change down to 1.5 degrees Celsius increase. Meanwhile, we need to adapt and move to climate resilient, climate smart activities to get the best out of it and minimize the impact on societies and economies. So climate services can help surely. They're essential tools for adaptation to climate change. And many reports, as you may know, have shown that the investing in climate services has many benefits. It's been rated to one out of four. So climate services are really essential for climate adaptation. So following the third word climate conference, the GCS was established with a three-tier organization at global level, regional and national level. And climate services are realized through a value chain from operational hydro meteorological systems, including observation networks, data and databases, climate monitoring and forecasting products and provision and delivery of services and all through partnership, research and innovation and development, as well as user interface platform. WMO, Global Producing Centers will feed information into the regional climate centers, which in turn process regional products to be used and adapted by national meteorological and hydrological services to meet their users needs. National meteorological and hydrological services develop tailored product through a user interface platform, as I just said, and through collaborative research, both at national level and international level and partnership to support planning and decision making in climate sensitive sectors, such as agriculture and food security, water resources, management, health, energy, disaster risk reduction to achieve improved climate related outcomes and generate social economic benefit. One example of climate services is this seasonal forecast produced during the regional climate outlook forums, the Arcofs, and these have been established over 30, 20 years now and have a nearly global coverage. And at the end, organize their national climate outlook forum, where they define, refine the forecast at the national level and update it throughout the rainy season. And the tendency of the rainy season is then well known, well in advance, as well as perspective for food security or insecurity. And this is very important for Africa, which is highly dependent. Challenges in Africa are many, but the main one I would say is for data and infrastructure, as well as expertise. But for expertise, we have a growing number of experts, but the issue is to have a critical mass of experts being returned at national level and develop those climate services. For the data and infrastructure, we've been having a steady decrease of the observation data. And this is not a significant, significant impact on climate infections. Thank you, Marianne. I think we're losing you a little bit, so hopefully that's Marianne. I think we're losing you a little bit. So I'm going to move on to our next question and swing back to you because you were just getting into the challenges and I'd like to hear more about that. My next question is for Laurie. Your organization works to convert earth data systems into relevant and actionable knowledge to combat climate change. Can you talk to us about how the different audiences ranging from the general public to policymakers to scientists, what are the different needs when it comes to understanding the climate change data that is generated by Earth observation satellites? Sure. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Earthrise, when we began just a few years ago, looked into the data that was available and determined that the biggest gap really was in connecting the unbelievable amounts of data we have to users. And those users can range, of course, from the public all the way to policymakers and a number of parties in between for uses that are perhaps unlimited, based on the fact that as well lead, I think well outlined in this earlier talk, the unique perspective of space offers us something that we cannot get otherwise. I named Earthrise because of course connecting space to the Earth, that Earthrise photo that was taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts was the first look back we had in the mirror that really captured the public's attention, but they also sort of capitalized rise because I worked at NASA so you have to acronyms and lies as a renaissance in sensing the environment. We have not only the new developments and sensor technologies and satellites, lower costs of launches and satellites, and all the new ways we have of storing and accessing data and modeling techniques. So we have had, I fully agree with this forum's premise, so much value to the climate change discussion we wouldn't even know about without our satellite constellations, but it's time for us to really figure out how to best utilize that data between resilience, things we can do to mitigate, and things that we can do to adapt. So for the public, we at Earthrise primarily work through journalists to tell stories. No matter what, it's a local story and the public around the planet needs to see and can see now from space what is changing in their own backyard. And I think Earthrise making that connection by seeding stories around the world to journalists who can then utilize the data within what is happening in their neck of the woods. So we utilize all the free government satellite data but also have agreements with the private sector providers like Maxon and Planet and Airbus. So being able to add value added analysis and show the public what's happening so they can recognize and take action to prevent it is one aspect of this. We also move students through teachers and allow them to access the data because again there is so much wonderful data out there from space and they can build on their own tablets or phones a story that shows in their own backyard how climate has affected their own environment. Ultimately leading to policymakers I think the major issue for policymakers is having people beyond sort of the agencies that create the data like like NASA really recognize how they can utilize it and to be able to share that information. If we are to do what most people agree would be necessarily to really address climate change we have to be able to measure it more precisely emissions in particular and if we can do that both with I think all the greenhouse gases but we're starting to do that with methane and certainly the CO2 that you can have a monetization scheme that is built on something that is verifiable so this would also work for trade agreements. I think policy can be set if it's somewhat of a chicken or egg I always thought well let's set the policies and certainly the private sector will come along if the government's going to buy that data to be able to fulfill the needs but it is also now the push unical because right now we have organizations developing data that will inform policymakers so it can drive policy so the technology is just an amazing renaissance where we are able to utilize more of the data but we don't utilize it in a way that as I think every single speaker has said already is as meaningful as it can be so if you are looking to as an insurance company you probably have found a way to get that information you know if you're if there's a way to make money later more and more people will do that but in a policy sense we really I think can do a better job and at least this administration is working to do that I will note that we often one of the gaps I think in the policy world is we at NASA for instance think well we measure the climate but we're not the ones who set policy to do anything about it and then you know NOAA is an operational agency and they are there to convey what's happening around the operational side and the hole in this the gap is who is going to analyze that data in order to influence policy and it would go back to the 80s where we had the determination by not just NASA but other agencies of the ozone hole but NASA scientists did help contribute to ultimate recognition and solution so recognizing that CFCs were contributing to the deterioration of the ozone hole led to them being banned through policy and that's the feedback with that we are trying to incentivize by people um seeing that this data isn't just for science there there should be things that connect that data to actions that make a meaningful change and that's what we're all about yeah absolutely I mean Laura you had on two points one you gave me a great lead into uh to Steve uh just an organization that is actually seeking to do exactly what you're saying which is address a very specific need within the community but before I turn to him I absolutely agree with you that I think soon as we make the mistake when you're a geek and when you're scientists you know build it and they will come we're excited about the data it shows us so much and that there's an absolute truth in that but you really hit on the point that it's about building a chain of information and it builds on what Marion was saying about that turning this into quiet services turning this into the ability to make decisions and then motivating people to do so because I think as we all unfortunately know just because we know something doesn't mean something happens next um and so having the data is incredibly important but then building out um information and attitudes and services and in interpretation all of those things matter just as much I think that was really a great overview Steve I'd like to turn to you next you are engaged in some exciting new work by a non-governmental and non-commercial organization essentially as I understand it custom designing a satellite to provide much needed climate data in fact just recently Governor Newsom of California set up another related project that these homegrown satellites are a game changer so I'd like for you to tell us about how that came to be and especially what other possibilities you see in the future in this particular area thanks so much crystal and thanks for the great talks and it's great to be here with these distinguished colleagues um so I think um Lori set it up wonderfully um I describe it as we're trying to build the data to action pipeline so what we need to do is not only have that intact pipe but also fill it with high quality data so methane sat is a satellite uh being built by methane sat LLC which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Environmental Defense Fund a non-profit and what we're trying to do is to produce high quality actionable data and fill the gaps that Lori described so that we can actually provide free of charge across the globe uh highly resolved spatially resolved and fully quantified methane emissions data from the oil and gas industry as well as hopefully agriculture which we're still working on the satellite launch in 2022 late 2022 and it really I think is a game changer and really trying to think through in a way the reverse order while um Selma talked about critically important scientists as on as a scientist who's worked on climate change for many decades on the ground and Mary Ann talked about adaptation another essential piece um and Lori talked about how to build the civil society accident but what we need though is increasing quantities of actionable data and we have to start with what data do we need and then work backwards to what technology will be required and that's exactly what we did in the methane sat case we didn't start with the technology we started with what data is missing and we started by using on the ground data collected intensively in the United States to say what do we need to understand in order to map and quantify methane emissions from oil and gas industry and why why look at oil and gas because it represents a significant source of methane and most people don't even understand recognize that methane accounts for a quarter more than a quarter of the warming we're experiencing today and because it's a short-lived climate pollutant roughly half of the warming will experience from emissions that are climate emissions from this year will be the result over the next 20 years so excuse me let me make that clear so the impact of this year's greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years will be dominated by methane emissions co2 is a critically important greenhouse gas which we have to reduce because that determines the long-term warming but in the near term if we want to slow the rate of warming which is creating so much of the damages we've got to reduce methane emissions and oil and gas industry has demonstrated they have the technology and the ability to reduce those emissions the IEA has shown that 75 percent of emissions are can be reduced with existing technology and roughly half of the emissions can be reduced at no net cost so we have a great opportunity but we don't have enough data so we started with what specific data do we need and then we went and said can we measure it from space because ultimately as everyone said we need to do this across the globe and the best place to do it is from space that resulted in a partnership between a range of different groups in academia former government employees the government in new zealand as well as the commercial space industry and we brought all of this expertise together to develop this capacity and relatively rapid time to create the most highly highly effective satellite so it's the most precise satellite currently being built or planned to measure methane emissions from space this will give us an unprecedented ability to see but in addition to the data we have to have the software that allows us to quantify those emissions generally we see data on concentrations those don't easily correlate with quantification so we're developing a fully automated inversion technique for the first time that allows us to map in near real time the total emissions we believe that building these kinds of pipelines through collaborations across civil society with government with private sector as well as with academics and NGOs will allow us to greatly accelerate what we know which will allow us to take action much more rapidly we believe that is really a game changer we think that we can make rapid progress by using this combination and lori spelled it out wonderfully of showing how traditionally we have siloed approaches different agencies or groups responsible for individual segments of the problem we really need to bring all of that together create a pipeline and fill it with high quality data and give policymakers and civil society the data they need to take the action that's required to reduce the rate of warming over the near term and the long term and only with that kind of dramatic action are we likely to be able to put off the most dramatic impacts of climate change which we all fear it's a big i mean i i think you're exactly right and we we know that and so one thing i wanted to actually do was take a look at this word cloud that we put is our first poll so we actually asked our audience to weigh in on sort of what is the first type of benefit they think of regarding satellites and climate change and one of the most interesting things that i see in this i know some of it's a little small for everybody to read but some of the biggest words they got put in the most actually don't relate to super specific technology they relate to the actions that you all have been discussing observing knowledge measuring monitoring having a global view having perspective so i'd like to get all of your thoughts in terms of we've identified i think as a group some of the important needs but one of the things that i'd like to ask is about resources so in his initial remarks while he specifically brought up resources and i wanted to ask you all all of you to weigh in any thoughts you have is the problem here money is this that we need more resources put to this problem or do you think that it's a lot more complex than that so maybe lori i'll start with you and then anyone else who's interested can chime in but i'd like your thoughts on you know do we have enough resources to enact what you all are just describing it's a great question and resources can mean a lot of things and i would never say we don't need more resources i believe we could effectively double nasa's budget and utilize it very well but it's an and not a just do that that wouldn't solve much honestly it is you know as as we're discussing last you've just said as well a combination of users in the government in the private sector nonprofits as well as global organizations so as as we're here i'd love to hear from the ipcc what do they really need we have models we have gaps because of data we have gaps because people don't know about utilization we have gaps that are still types along pretty much every point and i have found that both the government and the private sector want to do the right thing but they don't talk to each other well or interact well and i think the government really does want to do a a better job but the government doesn't speak with one voice and has a lot of priorities so even the great emphasis we have in the by an administration on addressing climate change nasa wasn't even within the first dozen agencies they thought of to be on their their climate policy team so we really have a lot of work to do and we can always use resources and money in other ways thank you i'll just kick it over to filma and and lori has a great point and then we'll go to steve and marianne but you know what's your perspective on this at the ipc yeah obviously i think i mentioned briefly in my presentation that at every assessment that comes every six years so it's voluntary work of thousands of what would say hundreds of authors coming from all over the world and obviously as i said assessing models and using these models to improve or to reduce the uncertainty so this is the real benefit that we have from one assessment to the other it's not that we go wrong in one assessment we can do better in the next because you are improving the accuracy of your your models you're inputting more data into the models to make them every time more more reliable uh so uh i think that from the point of view of the the ipcc obviously we rely a lot on the modeling community and the modeling community relies on better and better data so i see that you know when we talk about the issue of the resources obviously as lori has said the resources is always an issue right and but this is why we see a lot of partnerships also i think lori for you allow me there with you know i have been in the remote sensing space agency for a long time and i'm retired but at the beginning in 1982 the data was paid or flints of data not too many data viable and now through time you see more and more data becoming available for people to use and why do we say the importance of that is really so that everyone is equity everyone could have a chance of getting the data is tracking information from that data to as many have said to inform policymakers for action i don't know of a better example than the monitoring of the brazilian amazonia for the deforestation and they you know maintaining the consistency that's what important the consistency of the data availability that allows us to every single year wall to wall to inform the government now well if that triggers action at least the information is there so from the point of view of the IPCC that's what matters science is there we inform data is there now action action should come from every single government and that's what we are respecting from all governments in climate change so it's really a an important issue here resources availability free access to data and it's not only me saying that a lot of communities saying the importance of free accessible data to extract information to reform policymakers then it's up to them how to manage that yeah i can't hear you yeah i agree thelma i said on the program board of the group on earth observation that focuses on exactly this and so sometimes it's not just about putting more money into new data it's about how much we have access to and what we can do with that and is there enough resources to access the data that is available steve i'd like to get your thoughts on this topic well i think thelma pointed out to two key things so obviously open access data is critically important and while private sector is important it doesn't replace that open access data and the second one is policy relevant data and the example in the in the amazon is as a fabulous one but the regrettably much of the data that's collected is not policy relevant and there's no mandate to make it policy relevant so we really need to ensure that the funds that we do have lead to the full filling of that pipeline and not just data for data sake and while that is harsh i can say that i was an academic for most of my career i've been doing academic research for longer for a long time for many decades and i think we need a mandate to say that all of the data needs to lead there that's not to say that basic research isn't important but we haven't filled the gap and given that mandate to public spending and we have to recognize as we're doing with methane sat that philanthropic investments is also critically important we're able to make all the data for methane sat publicly available and to do all of this work in time by using philanthropic funding so thus we're taking no corporate funding and we do have government funding from the new zealander great so marion i'd like to hear your thoughts on this as someone who is focused on climate services in africa what are your resource needs what are where are the areas where you think there is more need for funding or other you know resources marion oh i barely hear you thank you i'm sorry i was breaking up but i was going to come up to resources before my internet breaks up i think that the resources are very important it depends just on where you are sitting in the world in africa is having access to the data and i would even add infrastructure is capital and i say that it is even the main challenge and i would put it under the budget constraint of the national meteorological and hydrological services which we're having very limited uh yearly resources so it's important and this is even well highlighted in the african ministerial conference on meteorology which is working very hard with african union commission to increase the political support to national med services and ensure that climate services are adequately delivered and in this delivery i think that all of the value chain of the climate services needs to be strengthened so data access to data being aware to the data getting the infrastructure to process those data are really key for africa thank you thank you marion that actually takes us to some of our audience questions which are starting to roll in so a reminder to everyone if you'd like to ask this panel or any of our panels you can click on the link at the bottom of the livestream i'm excited i think one of the first questions that has already gotten some upvotes in our voting people from the audience is related to exactly what marion was just talking about so i'd like to see if anyone else has any comments on it so starting with this question do policy makers know how important satellites are for tackling climate change and if not what can we do to improve that awareness and i'd like to add you know i think this is a great question because i think to a certain extent the answer is yes but not entirely and so all of you have interacted with government in different ways and i'd like to hear your thoughts on what we can do to improve the understanding among non-scientist policy makers that this data and these ops you know this information is there um so tell me i saw you nodding uh what are your thoughts yeah exactly as you say they all know but not everything so all the very technical issues that i put forward from working group one most likely you know the governments do not know into depth you know the implications of these measurements and these models and so on what do the governments know more readily they they more readily know about land use change so that's my assessment because of inventories because of submissions to the a and f triple c like you know forest changes like degradation deforestation uh so so so they are more interested or know more about the importance of remote sensing to assess these changes in land use and the implications of that so i would say that that is the number one for governments i would say and then you know others will build up their knowledge depending on how is they're surrounding in terms of technical people making them knowledgeable of the increases in CO2 in ch4 as Steve that has said i don't think that many governments know about the ch4 steve uh you know although we do have satellites already that measured that but i think that one of the implications and just crystal just to finalize is really you know remotely since data cannot separate the implications from anthropogenic anthropogenic actions in natural variability so many governments put that you know in front saying well maybe this is not really you know because of anthropogenic actions or measures but they come from natural variability that for instance is the case for buyers uh and uh just to give one example so let me jump in just yes Selma i i think is right though i i'm going to suggest that in fact what we need to do is ask the policymakers what data they need to create effective policy and then make sure we have it because in most cases we do not have the data that that's why i call it policy relevant data not at all some and where i would maybe disagree a little with Selma is that i think uh we do have the capacity for many types of sources of greenhouse gases to separate anthropogenic from uh uh human cause uh from natural emissions now there are some tough places absolutely where they're angled makes it very hard but we can do a lot better than we have by building instruments to provide the data needed by the policymakers with a deliberate mind to that and not the science and as a scientist i did almost in my career thinking about what do i need for science very important we need to turn that around what do we need to help humanity address the problems and build the tools to give that data in addition we have done a terrible job i would argue at that and i think that what we can do certainly what we found in methane is the tools were out there and we're not being deployed and we needed to start the again we need to run the from the pipeline the opposite way what do we need for policymakers then back up to the data and the technology and i think what we'll do is we'll see a rapid acceleration in the usefulness the recognition of the power of remote sensing and just a few years we have all the tools we just need to put them together and create a new generation of satellites that are much more policy relevant yeah i think that's a great point and it's impossible to separate out scientists doing things for science and then the incredible need that we have as a society right now and it's always going to be both that this is one area we're changing our frame or at least adding that frame of trying to think of it from the other direction is really key particularly when it comes to making useful data lori did you want to chime in on this one only to emphasize the point i could not agree more and you know that says science and applications but the applications parts oh really tiny and really not starting with the end state user in mind well the end state user is and has been that researcher to uh what steve used to be and we need to transition to um policymakers outside of just the you know domain of uh studying earth as a system and in addition to doing that be able to identify users so we can develop to their needs it's not something that's likes to do i guess i would ask steve if this even for me 10 years ago i was frustrated at masses and systems on sticking with the exact decadal plan for earth sciences and it would take 30 years to fly it all out with these big missions that were not based on any of the applications that were current and in talking to barry anymore who at the time had led the earth science decadal report and now while we followed with the next decadal report they both acknowledge that things in earth sciences change faster so that the investments probably can't be decided that that far in advance those work for astronomy for instance um steve do you think that is a is something we could do differently absolutely and again it's an and right so i am not in any way pushing back against science that would be against my whole training in the background right but but we need to exactly be nimble and that's where i i have to credit the folks that we brought in from commercial space they knew how to be nimble in a way but that wasn't sufficient we also needed the best leading academics which we brought in we have two great institutions in harvard and the smithsonian astrophysical observatory as key partners it was bringing all of that together historically we've not brought all those sectors together the policy makers so on our team we have a whole series of people who do nothing but interact with the policy makers so we can get that that input right what do they need what does the finance community need what do all these different communities need we need to have that voice there and not just you know i i've worked with barion over many years you know a lot of great scientists but that's you need other types of voices when we do these reviews and they can't be decadal or multi-decadal they have to be both long-term and near-term and that just like the climate problem we have a near-term problem and a long-term problem and it's a big and we got to solve both that is all about implementing effectively the global climate framework services as i said in in the beginning it's defining who needs the data what for policy makers users and that can be done through a user interface platform so implementing the global climate services is at national level original level is a key point absolutely i'd like to um i this is such a fascinating topic but i also want to give our audience a chance to ask more questions and i think the next one is really interesting so the question is in the past few years young climate activists have made global headlines what can young space professionals do or any space professional for that matter due to boost the utilization of space systems for climate change and action and so i think a way of rewarding this is we've been talking about all these different end users this is a really interesting group does anyone have any thoughts on as a public you know what about these young people who are really pushing fractions in some cases making a lot of progress you know is there a way that we can try to connect space data to them i have a concept that i put out in a couple ways that i'll just outline quickly which is the climate data core or uh something like biden has proposed and i think is having both the interior department and the agriculture department lead it but i think nasa no uh usgs could play a role because young people need to be well versed in reading satellite data and interpreting that and if you put people into training who do this or have people coming out of academia who have this ability they can go into local communities across the united states but hopefully the world more like peace corps to work with the decision makers on the local level we understand the impacts of this are local at least for adaptation um and resilience and to me there are so many people coming my my kids are in their 20s who this is should and is their number one priority and they would sign up to do some kind of service for um and space needs to play a role our data can be utilized better if we put people out who are trained who can connect that information people who do yeah see you do you have any thoughts on this you work at a university you work with the university as part of your project i'm just curious if it's something you all have considered yeah so certainly we try and and there is a lot of uh younger folk part of our project uh through universities but i think also uh you know satellites bring one set of data they're not the only source of data and there's a lot of on ground true thing there's a lot of remote sensing uh more uh you know visible spectrum mapping because one of the key things is you need to be able to understand what is where on a global basis we don't have those kind of global math so i think there's to lori's point um just a whole host of ways to interact what we have to do is also be realistic uh and you know there's some of this is highly technical and requires a fairly sophisticated math and there are fabulous young people who can do it but it isn't something that the average 18 year old or even the average 25 year old can do so we need to basically create a a menu of options for people to get involved i think they exist there there are lots of lots of organizations utilizing a range of citizen science as well as advanced computing and we see it in the data science world where we have all kinds of competitions um that that take advantage of a younger generation's commitment yeah absolutely and i think you're right that it's not everything right but there's an opportunity for visualization here an outreach that doesn't fit into our usual paradigm of governments and you know scientists and so trying to think of what we turn data into in certain circumstances for that outreach i think has a real real possibility there i'd like to move on to one more audience question i think i'll have uh maryan maybe take this one first um so we've talked a lot about satellite data here uh but that's not the only data source so this person was asking is there a need for the space community to develop more interactions with other sources of climate data so selma or maryan i'd love to hear from you on this one sure i think we need to mix up these uh long series of satellite data with institute data and any other data that can allow the computation of climate records to study climate change i can give the example of copernicus climate change service which is very useful but the african users need to be aware of those data to be able to develop their capacity to access them use them and process them for their own needs uh human satellites i think have been organizing lots of series of webinar but there are other satellite providers whose data can be of interest and the african community need to be aware of that so we need to really do some awareness campaign so that those youngsters and other users have access to them and what is very good and very promising is that many satellite operators are working together through the coordination group of the meteorological satellite cgms and the community of us observation satellite co s working group on climate monitoring to produce good climate data records without gaps so i'm very excited about the new generation of satellite that are coming as they will offer tremendous atmospheric and atmospheric composition data as well as surface ocean data with a much better special and temporal resolution and i think that this will in the long run offer better climate data records with a much higher resolution that will enable better knowledge of local climate change and local adaptation thank you phelma what do you think about how the space community interacts with other data sources well uh it's essential i would say that uh you know uh if you take for instance remotely sense the data uh to as an example to assess land use change right and then you would need some data in field ground data to validate your satellite data that's essential uh depending on the classifier that you're going to use to structure the information it has to be trained to do that and training means that you would input data that you have collected elsewhere so field data is essential here uh i score data so we are talking about a whole set of other data sets that really feed into the system it was really interesting because when we didn't have for instance satellite data to look at the concentration of CO2 versus all other gases and and when they came up to to you know into reality you see how much they fit into previous observations so that gives uh much more uh let's say confidence to to governments that you are putting together a whole set of data coming from different and independent sources that obviously add to the reliability of what you're talking about uh so it's essential i would say it's essential to have and let me say yeah i just want to emphasize that i mean i think there's some wonderful programs like igus at wmo so i'll plug mariam's wonderful institution as well as now at unep starting the international methane emissions observatory which is trying to link all these data bring them together in a way that allows us to create because they give you very different perspectives totally agree with thelma it's absolutely critical for validation you need this kind of data but there are on the methane front there are hundreds and hundreds of scientists literally many many hundreds collecting field data that absolutely creates a granularity that will we're well away from being able to ever produce with remote sensing and so they're complimentary they also provide uh the capacity building around the globe as as these studies occur in in a diversity of nations where you have good science but maybe hadn't worked on it and that's really that combination that gives us the confidence against a thelma's point and there are institutions that are working across these different scales and we need to support those absolutely so i'll be honest i could continue this conversation forever we have more great questions coming in from the audience uh but we have to end on time so i want to close with one opportunity for sort of one final comment here and and maybe kind of give 30 second two minute answers to just say you know this isn't a new problem i mean i i'm really excited about everything we've talked about i i think the opportunities are amazing but you know there's also a concern that we're not taking action fast enough and that you know as we talked about with young people they're very concerned for a very good reason uh you know we have the focus on the system you know the un sustainable uh sustainable development goals and whether we're going to to reach those in this area and so i'd like to close with just an opportunity for you to say you know 30 seconds of what do you think the most important form of action that we could take in this area in say the next 10 years or if you could sort of tell governments or academia or the commercial industry one thing that you think that they should do you know what would that be um see if i might start with you because i i suspect i might know the answer but i'm curious what you have to say and then we'll just go around the panel yeah so well as i mentioned we need to reduce methane emissions dramatically it can slow the rate of warming uh incredibly quickly uh which will reduce damages but and and a related to that is i think we need is the satellite community needs to think about as i said before what data does the policy community need and we have to ask them and then we have to go out and produce them in the next few years so that a decade from now we have a picture of what's happening that we've never had before and uh i think that's a game changer absolutely lori what about you i think the greatest gap is in leadership to me it does take people around the world and senior positions who show real leadership and stand up to and recognize what we now know is happening how we can get even more of that information and make decisions that will be impactful from that data in the us i i believe that nasa could take a much larger role i think nasa was formed to address what the us at the time and vision as a global crisis and they stepped up to it and they could do more now but there needs to be greater coordination in the u.s government for managing the data as part of the greater issue great thank you thelma what about you if you if you were okay for a day what would you tell everyone to do i'm gonna i'm gonna do bullet wise so loria was right when she said we need leadership and also we need to recognize the different governments and they have different capacities to implement uh you know uh climate responses like adaptation mitigation so uh a bullet point is leadership as lori has said we need international cooperation that's fundamental and ipcc recognizes that we need partnerships in terms of research in terms of technology transfer capacity building we need improved governance both uh international governments for some of the research issues that are necessary and also national government strengthening of institutions so and moreover i think that governments are lacking uh to look at climate change and the opportunities to address this to limit climate change and the opportunities in so many areas i think they are looking more from the negative side in terms of how much this is going to cost etc but they are not looking at the benefits and the opportunities uh before uh before addressing you know climate change and limiting global warming so i would say that these are my main points great thank you and maryan uh what are your thoughts uh tell me i nearly said it all but i would say uh a win-win partnership really and cooperation to transfer technology that enable access to data all data including satellite all data and have the infrastructure it is very important in africa to process the uh products that users need both uh policymakers and local users thank you so we are about to head to our break but before i do that i just want to say thank you to lori steve delma and maryan this has been an amazing conversation and honestly i hope it's not the first uh i admit when we built our agenda we were really thinking about changes that had happened in the world in the last year in the united states government and just really trying to say okay what can we talk about that will help people understand um in the space world we often talk about the value of satellites and we assume their value uh but i really wanted to dig into where the opportunities in the gaps and and what could we do to do even more and i think we've done that today so thank you all so much for being here for being an amazing kickoff for our summit for space sustainability and uh yeah thank you so much i really appreciate your time today uh for now we're going to go to the break we will be back at 10 30 everyone and i'm really excited we will be having a panel on mega constellation so if you have any questions at all please reach out to us in the meantime enjoy your short break hi everybody welcome back to the third annual summit for space sustainability we're now going to turn to our next panel mega constellations the train has left the station now what to get that train rolling uh we'll hear a spotlight talk from timibay aganaba an assistant professor in the school for future of innovation uh in society at the university uh sorry arizona state university she'll share some thoughts on the potential consequences and opportunities for mega constellations according to the united nation's office of outer space affairs over 11 000 space objects have been launched and recorded in their online index but this number is set to increase significantly as private companies and governments intend to launch tens of thousands of satellites into low earth orbit known as mega constellations this trend is driven by the reduced cost of hardware and launch and the increased demand for low latency high broadband internet to underserved locations while u.s companies like amazon canada's telesat and uk's one web proposed mega constellation satellites in the order of the low thousands u.s space spacex alone has announced plans to launch 42 000 satellites as part of its starlink project if this happens spacex will be responsible for a five old increase in the number of satellites launched by all of humanity of those 42 000 they plan to have 11 926 launched in orbit by 20 27 also importantly as the european commission is currently studying the feasibility of a european owned space space communication system and the chinese government has created a company dedicated to creating and operating a 13 000 satellite broadband constellation the soft power political and security element is also present much as we see with global navigation this means that some actors may enter this vertical even if the business case is not evident one of the big questions is does servicing this increased demand warrant all the increased risks to in low earth orbit the atmosphere and on earth covet 19 showed us the extent of the digital divide problem those connected were able to maintain business or find new opportunities and continue their education those who were not whether in rural areas indigenous communities or in developing countries found themselves further marginalized this leads some to question whether there is a right to be connected while low earth orbit is not the only way to be connected proponents argue that it is cheaper and faster and this serves to bring many of the world's population into the 21st century but should this goal be met at all costs the astronomy community were one of the first communities to raise the alarm in a significant way about the risk posed to their activities by the brightness of satellite constellations namely that the constellations cause streaks diffuse background light and cause radio noise that may prevent access to the sky essentially two proposed rights are pushing against each other the right to be connected versus the right to a dark and quiet sky the space industry argues that there is no hierarchy to space activities and everyone is free to explore space subject only to the outer space treaty but as article one of the outer space treaty highlights the freedom of outer space is subject to the condition that space be explored and used for the benefit and in the interests of all countries in this case what is benefit and who gets to decide we must promote dialogue to ensure that space activities are and continue to be beneficial for all of humanity untracked debris is also a big risk as this could lead to potentially dangerous in orbit collisions on a regular basis other less known risks include that satellite re-entries could deposit more aluminium into earth's upper atmosphere and the cumulative impact of thousands of rocket stages on the oceans environment could be significant should these stages contain hazardous materials but should we still be concerned as some operators seem to be listening according to tell us that ceo operators are following best practices regarding how to deal with debris and a designing satellites to minimize debris protect the space environment and are launching into the lowest orbit so that trouble satellites can decay quickly and in response to astronomy concerns spacex has been meeting with the astronomy community regularly and innovating around a coating called dark sat and a sunshade to address the brightness of satellites the issue is can we rely on the good faith of these actors and some argue that what they're doing does not go far enough for instance in recent times the news has reported controversy involving close approaches between a starlink satellite and one web satellites and the european space agency where coordination did not work well with no space traffic management system or global space situation and awareness capability we may hear more of these issues so what do we do next the international astronomical union has now decided to take the issue of light pollution to the united nations committee on the peaceful uses of outer space requesting that they protect the night's darkness for the sake of advancements in astronomy but astronomers are just one stakeholder mechanisms will be needed to balance interests and encourage coordination bolian buyers argue in the recent edition of nature journal that to address the myriad of concerns that will affect all communities international corporation is urgently needed along with a regulatory system that takes into account the effects of thousands of satellites including action for improved space situation and awareness improved communication between operators and internationally adopted right of way rules all right excellent good morning everyone good afternoon or or time appropriate greeting for where you're at my name is christ johnson i'm the space law advisor at the secure world foundation this panel now deals out with mega constellations after this the first panel was very focused on terrestrial matters we're now leaving the terrestrial domain and we're looking at the space domain i really think that you know timmy's introduction and her framing video you know puts a lot of these issues that are at play the fact that we have these competing legitimate uses we have this the use of the space domain for mega constellations and all the benefits that they offer but we have these other legitimate uses of the space domain like optical astronomy and the fact that there's these real challenges for space traffic management and space situational awareness luckily we do have a panel with us who can really get into some of these issues i don't think we're gonna have we're gonna find any perfect solutions but at least we're going to be able to highlight and elucidate some of these issues joining me on my panel first is tim furar tim is the president of telecom media and finance associates his own consulting firm based in menville park california which specializes in the technical and financial analysis of wireless and satellite ventures tim has over 25 years of a consulting experience across the telecom and satellite industries having worked for leading technical and strategy consultants in both the us and the uk mr furar thank you for joining us this morning next we have uh professor hugh louis hugh is the head of astronautics research group at the university of south ampton in the uk and has been working in the fields of space debris and space sustainability for over 20 years he is a member of the uk space agency delegation to the interagency space debris coordination committee the iadc and is the chair of their working group too on modeling he's also currently a member of the royal astronomical society subgroup assessing the impacts of satellite mega constellations on optical astronomy professor louis thank you for joining us as well next we have randy seagull randy is a partner at the law firm hogan levels and has over 18 years of in-house general counsel experience her work focuses on satellite wireless drone and technology transactions randy's transactional and advisory experience has brought her throughout north and south america europe asia and the middle east and on the most complex of international programs and legal issues randy thank you so much for joining us and last but not least is uh andy williams mr williams is the external relations officer at the european southern observatory where he supports strategic relations with current and future member states the european union and international organizations such as the un prior to joining the european southern observatory he worked as a senior policy advisor for for nato and as a physicist for the uk government so uh first i i'd like to speak with mr ferrar tim in that spotlight talk that we all just heard uh tim introduced this idea that there are tens of thousands of satellites that are predicted that are likely to uh be launched and enter into operation in the space domain largely from the us canada uh europe and likely as well china do these predictions seem to make sense to you from an economics and business standpoint maybe uh um if you if you have some perspectives on that and is there really a market to support some of these plans so tim over to you thanks christ uh yeah i mean you know just in terms of a bit of personal history i i uh you know 25 years ago i i worked on a lot of the uh big leo projects back then i co uh global star iridium telodesic for many years and then saw the aftermath of that with the uh many many years of bankruptcy and litigation over the the collapse of a lot of those projects so you know that sort of colors my perspective that you know uh while it's very true to say there could be tens of thousands of satellites launched uh you know if you go back 25 years the predictions that people were making back then was that everyone's phone would have a satellite capability in it that there would be tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars spent on satellite broadband within a decade um and you know it just didn't happen uh because the economics didn't work out and now you know here we are 20 years later and uh sadly i'd say a lot of people have forgotten the lessons of the the 1990s uh you know these things come around 10 years later or 20 years later when everyone's retired and forgotten about it um but you know we still face a lot of the same challenges yes the technology has advanced but the technology is advanced and terrestrial uh even faster than it has in satellite over the last two decades and you know it's still really unclear uh so i think what i i'm concerned about is that we see lots of statements about how awful everything will be with 40 000 satellites on SpaceX or 100 000 satellites on all the different companies combined because people look at what is filed with the ITU what is filed with the FCC and you know people make filings to stake out a position because they can only sort of step back from it later they can't move forward and add even more satellites at a later date and keep the same priorities that they had so i mean i guess my question for uh people like uh uh hu will be you know okay great you know it may be terrible with 40 000 satellites but what's the real you know if we take some sort of real rational point of view that maybe there's only four or five thousand satellites that get launched you know and even that requires a lot of money to be invested over the next uh five to ten years which may or may not be available or who knows what's going to happen to the financial markets but is the situation a complete crisis and disaster with let's say four or five thousand satellites uh or do we you know is it really only with 40 or 50 000 satellites so that that becomes a problem so so that's you know that's what i'd like to hear from some of the other panelists is let's take some sort of you know what we view as rational let's say you know SpaceX is saying already you know we can't launch a v-band satellite because there aren't any terminals and it you know propagation is terrible and everything else so let's focus on what people's concrete near-term plans are and if that's a terrible situation then please please tell us because that's going to need a lot more urgent action than worrying about something that probably will never happen to the tune of 40 or 50 000 satellites yeah i like that thank you um that i mean those are good questions for for hu hu yeah i mean the predictions right now like he said people are really worried about 40 50 000 satellites but what if it's only a fifth of that before you answer that though i really want to know i mean the challenges for mega constellations the that they pose to ssa and space traffic management and the debris issue um whether it's at the uh this higher number that that is possible or possibly a lower level what is a what do mega constellations mean for space traffic management and uh you know our awareness of the domain thanks very much chris um that's a really good question and i'm going to thank tim later for setting me up with a actually quite a tricky question to answer as well um so um a lot really depends on the the attitude that these operators are going to take into this space environment um you know we've run computer simulations which which can show a really big impact on the space environment if the operator is is perhaps not as advanced in their stewardship of the environment and all we can see you know for the same number of satellites for a very similar type of setup um actually a rather benign um situation so we're kind of beholden really to the um the attitudes and the approaches that these operators take both in terms of the impact on the orbital debris environment but also in terms of space traffic management um you know it's not necessarily been a great start um if we look at the uh the particular encounters that space x for example have had with starlink constellation um you know quite public uh events that that have enabled us to really get some insight into the challenges and and it hasn't been great to be perfectly honest and a lot needs to change going into the future to to ensure that we don't run into even worse problems with respect to the space traffic management uh concerns and and the orbital debris concerns as well but i think uh you know that there are some very good and very positive signs coming from the operators in terms of how they intend to operate i think it's really just a matter of making sure that they actually stick to those kind of things well i mean i'll ask a more pointed question if you know if we're how worried are you on some of these issues now how worried would you be if they you know only only deploy and put into operation a fifth or you know a third of of what they predict and what they aspire to and how worried would you be if they really really roll out everything and really get everything working on orbit the of true global constellation a mega constellation what does that really look like so i mean to be honest i'm i'm really worried really no matter the number of satellites that we're talking about because we're really into unprecedented territory and um it's been driven not by governments that that tend to move in very slow fashion it's been driven by companies and companies that that uh aim to disrupt the market and they're doing the same thing in their space environment um so if you take for example um this uh fail fast fail often kind of mantra that is often associated with companies like space x potentially others as well um it's really about short term isn't um it's not necessarily focused on on the long term issues it's a philosophy that that sets up the idea that um that there's no problem that you can't overcome um and you just iterate through those problems so it works fantastically well for things like um you know failures of components on on rockets or on spacecraft but when you're hit with societal issues and and challenges it really doesn't work well at all and um orbital debris is one of those issues um same thing with with the astronomy issues as well um and and really those companies aren't set up they're a little bit naive in that sense um they don't necessarily have the foresight to be able to solve those problems in advance they they actually deliver almost test satellites into orbit and then wait for problems to occur and then you know fix them quickly and fly in a new satellite and that doesn't work and that really leads me to um worry quite a lot about the impact that these um constellations can have in the environment yeah i mean we run into that quite often where you know new users of the space domain think that they're the only or the first users of the space domain and it just is not necessarily so um thank you for that we might have to come back to you i want to now go to uh randy and talk about a little bit about the regulatory environment the approval environment um randy what does it look like what does the regulatory environment look like for mega constellations or you know you can use whatever term you want if you want to call it um you know global systems or um global constellations what is that what does that type of approval process look like and uh where are we at on the regulatory front unless she can't hear us in which case we'll have to come back oh go ahead go ahead yeah we hear you go ahead i just wanted to um start off by saying tim thank you for having the memory that i do going back to the nineties and teledies and all the mega constellations then but i will tell you that this is different back in back in the nineties when this happened uh we always thought that they must know what they're doing right these the smart companies must know what they're doing led by smart money and it has to there has to be something there it was too early first times i will tell you a lot of things that are happening now are very different feeling than they were in the nineties i genuinely believe that this is real it doesn't matter to me whether it's 40 000 or whether it's 30 000 or 20 000 i think that spacelink and typhoon are real i think the chinese will be going up uh with their mega constellations we have so many other you know hundred to thousand constellations that are in existence as well and the issues on light pollution the issues on the uh environmental issues with aluminum particles from small sat launches and the issues of orbital debris are real regardless with with launching every seems like she might get cut up a little bit um randy we'll come back to you i want to i want to quickly go to uh andy at iso to really talk about the you know the the challenges for ground-based astronomy optical astronomy what does it look like now and and what are your predictions for the near term and honestly you know um this issue really developed rapidly over the last couple years it really it's not like it took us by surprise but it really came up on us fast so if you could tell us a little bit about that uh you know uh educate us on on the effects on on your profession sure so i just want to start up by saying you know thanks for the invite and for considering astronomy as one of the stakeholders now in this issue of mega constellations so i just want to uh reflect on tim's question um which he put to us and just note that um astronomy observatories you know have lifetimes of 30 or more years so we have to plan long term and we can only act on the basis of formal government plans such as the itu filings so you know even though it might be the case that um not all the filings are realistic i mean these are the things that we have to base our assumptions on for planning for the long term so if we consider the main projects in development we can expect um several thousand satellites overhead at any one time and particularly just before sunrise and just after sunset most of them will be illuminated by the sun and potentially uh detectable by a telescope so if if you live in a city you might not notice anything unless you know exactly where to look but if you go to a dark sky area you you will see uh tens or even hundreds of moving objects in the sky and this you know this is a change to this beautiful landscape which is one of the few natural wonders that is accessible to every single person on the planet and i and i really believe that the international community has to um consider this so from the the perspective of astronomical science well the impact is really depending on the interaction between the telescope and the constellation system so the basic impacts depend on the number of satellites the size of the telescope and the orbital altitude uh of the satellites which is a very important factor and overall you know the impacts range from quite minor to some of the large narrow field telescopes that are looking at a very small patch of the sky to very uh severe for those facilities that need to do their science at twilight when there's more visible satellites um and for wide field telescopes that are looking at a large portion of the sky so the largest of these at the moment is the Vera Rubin Observatory and they're facing you know many percentage of images ruined and almost every single image having a satellite trail um in the early hours of the night so they're they're they're facing substantial extra cost to achieve their defined science goals and you know you're right that this issue kind of really took us by surprise and our satellites have always been a problem um but I think the root of the issue here is that none of our environmental laws directly have address the visual appearance or even the general sustainability of the space environment and the optical spectrum is not managed in any way so there's no regulation to compel space actors to take action or for governments to set um a level playing field of rules um if we consider the radio sides okay um there are thousands of objects that are now transmitting and radio observatories were able to observe outside the the slim portion of the spectrum that's protected by finding a local radio quiet zone which offers greater protection but the issue is that these radio quiet zones can't offer any protection from space-based transmissions so we're going to have this problem of just much more background noise from these thousands of new antennas in the sky and the electronic noise that's coming from from the satellites so we've been we've been working with the community we've been working with the industry and I can go into some of more of those um aspects later if you like yeah certainly I mean listen we have a lot of students that are also attending do you if you can recommend any kind of background or document or something that summarizes many of these issues um please please feel free to share it um but you know my question also is well actually hold on you said satellites are always a problem satellites have always been a problem is that always is that true that even if it was just a few satellites um that even that caused problems for astronomy yeah so for radio astronomers I mean they they know now that there's this big arc across the sky which is the geostationary belt um where you know there are satellites in there and essentially in certain frequencies they just have to avoid this this area um satellites have been a problem um from the optical side uh I mean already the Hubble space telescope is getting you know some percentage of and its frames affected by streaks um but you know in general the the impact scales with the number of satellites so you know just in the the past two years we've seen a what is it a 2000 um new additional objects added so you know the the problem is increasing rapidly and if you if you look at the projections I mean we could see 100 000 new objects looking at the itu filings and then you know this is getting into some serious impacts all right and I mean are you coordinating with the folks like the the space situational awareness folks and space debris folks because you both have I don't want to say grievances but you both have issues that that that um are talking about the same actors the same users you both have problems with the mega constellation operators so is there some type of coordination already happening yeah so the astronomy community has formed um several national working groups and also we have a group that's um under the auspices of the international astronomical union and as part of these groups you know we've invited um experts in um in space situation awareness so Hugh is a member of the the UK um Royal Astronomical Society group that's looking at this and of course this this is important because part of the solution to the issue for astronomy um part of the solution is about finding ways to compel industries to share data um on the trajectories of the satellites predictions and for the future and of course this is something that will also help the space situational and awareness question so I so I'd say this collaboration is you know just starting to emerge but I but I think that a direction where we need to go in the future is is to really work more closely together and between these two communities okay um you know at the top of our panel we had a poll for folks to weigh in on some of the topics if we can bring up the results of that poll and we might have to um you know revisit the poll near the end of the at the end of the panel so let's see we asked the attendees are the predictions about mega constellations numbering the tens of thousands of operational satellites in the next decade overestimating about right or underestimating so it seems that they seem they might be agreeing with Tim the almost half say that they're overestimating so all right it makes sense that if you say you're going to launch or you aspire to launch tens of thousands and 40 50 thousand satellites you might be overestimating it you know um but you know let's say 34 percent says they're about right uh I you know I think that I wanted to highlight that but even if even if it's not exactly what we're going to meet we you know it seems like we're still going to have some of these issues um a lot of these issues I think it's it's important to not frame it as one side versus the other or a binary operators versus um you know optical astronomers or operators versus those who are worried about space debris and ssa does that make sense is there a way to not have this be totally um a clash of legitimate uses anyone that wants to weigh in on that you know how do we not make it a clash oh and I see Randy has joined us back again good Randy how do we not make it a clash okay while my internet is working this is why we need the mega constellation so there's better internet as well yeah I think that as um you know it's not just commercial versus um other the the astronomers and the orbital debris I think we have to work on this together we have to work because the internet you know you see what happened in countries and with people who didn't have internet during the covid crisis and everything else this is something that really the world does need in terms of having the satellite connectivity the challenge is how to do it at the same time that the orbital debris in particular doesn't cause issues for destroying like like the plastic in the oceans and everything else this is a global issue and how do we have coordination with mega constellations being launched by folks like china if we're not communicating with them these are global issues although the us is ahead of all the other countries in terms of launches that it's flagging this is the global problem that we have and while a treaty united nations type of process is not going to keep up with as we've learned over the years is not going to keep up with the rapidity of that's going on with advances there's got to be some kind of a forum compromise that allows for remedies and doing the best thing as a global citizen because space is for everybody and if we do it wrong we're going to create a problem that's going to be the gift that gives for eternity um responses go ahead you uh yeah thanks i randy's absolutely right um so thanks very much randy i'm glad to have you back um the one of the biggest issues that we have is that the um these mega constellations are regulated at a national level and there was very little coordination that takes place between the regulators so so we'd have a decision that's taken place in the us about a mega constellation there and we can have a decision that's that that's made in the uk or elsewhere in the world and um there's there's no sense that the the combined effect of those two constellations going into orbit is being considered by either of those regulators um so so we have that knowledge we have the capability to to make those kind of assessments but there isn't any forum where that can be addressed and where the the regulatory aspects can actually be um be sorted out um andy can you you know european southern observatories observer at copus and they just wrapped up well actually it was a while ago they did the scientific and technical subcommittee can you give us uh you know were these discussions held at the at the international level at copus and any results or what's going to happen next yeah so i think the the sort of issue here that that has been touched on i mean the astronomy community is engaging with the industry the industry are engaging with us and this is this is much appreciated and you know some companies have made substantial changes to the designs of their satellites like um SpaceX and you know we've we're having the situation of bilateral agreements you know nondesclosure agreements between single observatories and companies and okay we can do this with five but can we do it with 10 you know what are the other uh countries um going to do so it you know it just something that becomes unsustainable and i think what we need is a global approach to this um so that's why the from the iou uh works on this and you know made the first approach to you and copious as you said at the science and technical subcommittee and we made a set of recommendations and that amongst other things you know sets and basic requirements to mitigate damage to astronomy to protect the night sky to encourage governments to regulate on the matter and to create a norm of cooperation and consultation with the astronomy community over space activities so you know in the discussion that happened at copious um i was really pleased to see that many countries recognize the value of astronomy and the concerns that we have but you know the the problem in this in this system it's so complex it's linked to many other very very difficult issues such as you know the allocation of slots for low earth orbit or you know the ideas such as a carrying capacity for low earth orbit and you know all the problems with space sustainability in general that's sort of you know there was a sense that no no country could really kind of take a firm stake um and say right you know we're going to we're going to adopt these recommendations so you know we got the um i think it was what we were expecting which was basically carry on working carry on studying this issue and report back next year so okay i mean that's that's that's a first step but you know in this year another thousand or two thousand satellites are going to be launched can i just jump in here to something to what andy said so one of the regulatory requirements not for the geospatial satellites remote sensing but for the connected uh band uh band broadband satellites is you have to get landing rights in countries so even though for example the united states is the one that flags the constellations from the us or the uk for one web etc you still need landing rights to go into countries i think that that is a potential strategic negotiating leverage point other than just being good corporate citizens with the constellations to try to achieve all the goals that we have let's put china aside because that's its own uh creature vis-a-vis the united states but as to everything else and everyone else getting landing rights is critical to a lot of the businesses and could be a basis to begin a dialogue with the countries but i mean let's be blunt here a lot of this business is going to be based on defense applications iridium got rescued from bankruptcy by the dod because it felt it was a system that was going to be critical to the us to preserve um and it would not be in the least surprising if a very large proportion of the revenue from some of these companies came from defense applications and in that sense uh how do you really uh as a as a national uh you know country that's concerned about its own technological advantage in space how do you really concede to something like a un body that they should uh you know control your strategic priorities but tim even if the united let's just go with your um hypothesis that the dod defense communities in the us is driving some significant portion of revenue for the constellations not just iridium as it had done but some of the others they need the deployment in other countries as well for their missions and they do not control the deployment in those other countries so each of the other countries still has their own respective potential but i'm saying potential gatekeepers to accomplish environmental or other orbital debris goals if theirs differs from that of the united states well true but i mean of course the the regulations applied to a host forces agreement are not necessarily the same as the regulations applied for selling terminals to consumers in the country so uh completely agree that there will be limitations if for the commercial part of the business if you can't get access to a wide variety of countries you're going to have a big problem generating your business plan but that may may mean that some of these operators fought back even further and harder on defense applications where the leverage points very different for getting access into a particular country if there's a war or a disaster or some other crisis that that requires access but i think tim i mean the we can't forget the operators themselves and certainly from an orbital debris point of view that they're probably best place to police themselves because if if they cause debris issues in the in the orbits that they're in then then of course that's going to harm their own business so so in many senses the orbital debris issue is is also perhaps more easily managed thanks to the the the need to operate in a clean way i think that the astronomy issue is outside of that because there is no incentive there for the operators other than the concerns being raised by the astronomy community to actually to behave in a different way yeah absolutely i mean iridium didn't you know got most of what it wanted against radio astronomy back 20 years ago and really you know they had made some compromises they've made some improvements in subsequent designs but in the end you know the objectives of the radio astronomers to you know keep them out of the band that was you know very close to a key observing band didn't really happen in the way that people wanted it to happen so um yeah it's a huge problem and as i say the i mean i would just take issue with uh with randy's statement that you know she said you know 20 years ago we thought people knew what they were doing and it proved that they didn't and now it's different and and and i my view is it's not different no one knows what they're doing no one knows what the market is you could go you know you look at what uh you know space x was saying five years ago that they'd have uh 30 billion dollars of annual revenue from this by 2025 no sorry it's not happening uh i mean it's just not and uh no one actually knows what the market is no one knows what the economics are we're in an environment where endless money is being thrown at uh space it's a huge investment theme uh people are filled people see these billionaires who they think must know what they're doing and you know we're seeing all these spat companies which range from you know very ambitious to probably not going to work and and take your pick so uh but people are still prepared to fund them so it's a very difficult situation how long the money lasts how long people prepared to go on with that when they see the real results i mean you know iridium everyone was gung-ho about this in 1998 nine months later it's in bankruptcy because you know there weren't any customers and you know maybe today is different in the sense that people are more forgiving for maybe a year or two but in the end the proof's in the pudding and and we're going to have to see how many customers these people actually serve and how much revenue they generate and whether it's sustainable uh and i will just add one point about iridium you know the big difference between iridium and global star was that the satellites for iridium lasted 20 years which allowed them to build up a business pay for a second generation system global star satellites lasted seven or eight years and the company you know put the company behind the eight ball the whole time it's always been a massive struggle for them and so you know one of the key questions in my mind for all these systems is how long their satellites last because if they only last five years um then it's often well to say oh good they'll all be upgraded but the economics get massively massively worse for any system if you're if you can only make money and have to ramp up over a period of three four five years before you have to replace it yeah that's true i mean we do see that that idea of go fast and break things randy you had something to comment yeah i was going to say tim two things one is the economics of the systems are enormously different than when they the iridium and global star and that whole wave of bankruptcies happen in terms of the what it costs to build these satellites that are often being built just next to the engineer's desk maybe just literally or figuratively i don't know and the launchers are enormously different in cost and then they were back in the olden days and so i will say to you that i do agree with you certainly on the wave you know space has become sexy and the number of companies that have been spacked in pre-revenue stages is astonishing to me in terms of the successful outcome time will tell how many of them are still standing in five years or have gone through bankruptcy and you know most of the a lot of the companies we saw in bankruptcy then the second owners were successful in building the business so in five years tim i predict and we'll talk again you and i on the record by the way this is on the record i predict that it will not be the same as the nineties of course there will be plenty of companies that have consolidated or gone away because this is not sustainable in all the numbers there are in each different segment that exists there will be winner but i think there will be winners that don't go through bankruptcy and there will be um i think there will be and so we'll five years tim we'll touch base i'll take the bet okay i mean yeah you know it's ironic you know you the people who've been here a long time and it's um you know i found one most ironic comments about you know when utah sat said it was investing in one way but they they basically said the best thing about one way but it's already had its bankruptcy and that and that sort of indicative of the history here um all right folks for those who are watching and attending we do have the possibility to submit questions through mentometer we can put up the code for you to quickly find um yeah type that in um at mentometer and we already have a few questions that i want to get to um honestly easy uh this easy first question is dealing with this term that we use mega constellations why must we use the term mega constellations they they opine it is an imprecise term that hints that the more satellites that are in a constellation the more risk the constellation poses it clouds that fact any reactions to that and maybe solutions professor louis um yeah thanks grace um it's a good question and um my interactions with various companies uh yeah they they dislike the term quite considerably um you know if you take the literal meaning then of course it is not accurate um but we use mega for lots of things that are big it's it's slang for things that are big and and in this case the constellations that we're talking about are bigger than the the typical space systems that we're used to so it perhaps isn't quite as as bad as um as you might think but yeah i mean across the community i'm in we tend to try and use the term large constellation instead but i i mean there's a history there that you know back in the 90s we had little leos which were the data only small satellites like all calm we had big leos which was iridium and global star and telodesic was referred to as mega leo to distinguish it from iridium and global star and to be indicative perhaps of broadband communication as well so so i think it's just got really got picked up from there uh that in a way even though it shouldn't it refers to the broadband constellations rather than anything else yeah i mean there's the technically precise approach to finding the right term and then there's like the effect it's going to have and if you call them global constellations or mega constellations um it you know sets an image in some people's minds i don't think we have a real solution to it though this next question um kind of detailed what is the current thinking on the best ways for constellation operators to exchange enough information to safely coordinate their constellations so general ssa and and how the how's that going to work in the in the future especially between private and state-owned systems anyone would like to take a swing at that that's a tough one i mean let me throw in it just a little bit of thinking about sort of you know there's an issue of when you have you know thousands of satellites you've got to have a high level of automation that's what spacex has talked about for its constellation that everything happens by remote control um so you do run into a problem with if with two systems you know if they're both automated then how do they react to one another they do they might both move in the same direction so they you know both you know don't take themselves out of the path they both think they're diverting and they divert the the same way and they're still on a collision path so i think there's two aspects of it one is like you know you have to have rules between operators in terms of saying if you're doing this automated then you know we don't move but the second stage to that is if you're doing it automated we have to trust that your system actually works and so i think one of the rules here has to be that regulators have to impose more disclosure obligations so that people know and can verify that the other that the other company you know is doing the right thing is going to move this way you know that you know they always they maybe they say they always move to the left or something um but you have to have validation that has there has to be disclosure it can't all be kept confidential uh and you have to you know have confidence at what the other side is doing makes sense and that you what you're doing is not you know making the problem worse rather than better i believe i agreed entirely with tim but i also don't know that this can be fully accomplished with the mounting number of satellites out there including failed satellites and other orbital debris without having some kind of centralized or coordinated equivalent of an air traffic controller someone that's either a intergovernmental body or some country that takes the lead that you know continues to tell the that the operators have to disclose their information to the same way for aircraft you have to say where you are as with your aircraft so that you can coordinate and try to avoid a collision so i i don't know that it can be done exclusively between the operators there's just too many of them and there's too many differences in the degree of self self supervision yeah i mean i think i would almost categorize into two things one is monitoring all the stuff that's debris and can't be maneuvered and then it's the operator you know knows it's not moving and they have to you know move themselves and then there's the case of two satellites that are potentially controllable and and what do the two operators have to do and i think the cases that were cited in the introductory talk about isa and starlink and one web you know all satellites that were under control and the issue there was the simple fact of like well who's going to move is it you or me and not necessarily knowing what starlink was doing you know when it was said to all be automated well who knows how that automation works which way does it move do you trust it all these sorts of aspects so so i think you know i completely agree with randy that for the debris side the stuff that isn't moving there needs to be you know considerably considerable monitoring lots of good information about that responsibility put on to the operators but then you know monitoring what the operators are doing understanding you know the regulators have a responsibility to you know understand that their procedures are best practice and that what they you know how they're reacting relative to one another and and sir and oh no it looks like he froze for a second um but i think that really leads into this next question about um what happens if a constellation operator goes bankrupt so please display that next question what happens when consulate this constellation operator goes bankrupt with a partially deployed uh constellation is their contingency plans and and they say that it seems unlikely a buyer would emerge so um randy how would a how would a national regulator you know even consider that are they thinking about something like that and what do you think would happen well first i think that spectrum most of these systems have spectrum and they and or or have it priority of some sort which are both valuable uh commodities and so i believe that even if it's a giveaway of a system that someone would assume in bankruptcy and most bankruptcy laws of most countries are pretty much the same would assume the liability and to deorbit or to do whatever else it is for the constellations and or use the constellations for another purpose particularly if they have spectrum and the like so you know a partially deployed system can still be used for certain purposes and or a buyer could uh pivot and come up with a new business model for the spectrum for the system there was speculation at some point with one web that even if they didn't continue with that constellation the spectrum alone was very valuable to someone it's also worth pointing out that um uh during the uh the bankruptcy the the satellites paused in the orbit raising for example you know they they they didn't continue in the in the way uh that they could have done um because of course if no buyer emerged then that the safest thing to do for the environment would have been to deorbit those satellites and it's easier to do that from the less risky from the lower altitude um so so i think you know the the the liability issue is a really good one because obviously the the responsibility is going to fall to the the the launching states um you know to take the necessary action um at at the cost of course so it's good to see that actually there was that pause with with one web in terms of their operations um i have a directed question although it is um you know many people can weigh in and it's uh uh this one about prospects for reforming the regulatory system someone asks randy what are the prospects of reforming the regulatory regime to include things like light pollution you know when you apply for a frequency when you apply for a launch license it doesn't ask on there are you affecting ground-based astronomy or you know it just isn't on there um should it be and if you were a regulator you know how would you uh take some of these equities in it into consideration well the regulatory regime has been undergoing in the last five years significant evolution to try to actually be quicker on its feet because the you know some of the regulators and the itu process and the FCC was a very slow one and wasn't addressed to a lot of the commercialization of space and there was a real move in the last five years to try to accelerate and expedite regulatory approvals and to make it easier to go to space i think that there are though a number of issues as the technology continues to evolve with large constellations issues that no one thought of really the light pollution when they were building it etc i think the FCC in particular has pushed back recently and said satellites are not governed by environmental protection act there's an ongoing case in dc that's by competitors uh competitive satellite companies challenging the star link constellation and i think that um you know so i think that the regulators are going to need also to kind of come together on some of these issues because these leo constellations and large constellations especially the ones that don't need landing rights in other countries the other countries don't have a say on what those constellations are going to look like and how it affects their territory so it's not just it shouldn't i don't think it should just be the um regulator of the existing uh country that has a say but then that wreaks havoc if you start imposing all these other requirements like light pollution nipa everything else then the speed that we've gained over the last five years to support commercialization and the space industry will become halted and so it's a real trade-off it's a real trade-off of how do we take into consideration these issues and at the same time uh how do we support the commercialization of space that's the dilemma that's the paradox anyone else want to weigh in should the regulators ask that question um should it be on you know their application um andy yeah so i mean at some point uh in in the distant past the FCC didn't consider uh space debris guidelines and then at some point they did and of course part of the logic behind its inclusion was that you know orbital debris affects the assets that is under regulating kind of directly um but i mean it's you know it would be trivial for a regulator to add in this this this uh extra kind of step that they have to do but i think as randy said it comes with a cost which is then imposed on that particular system and i think that this is where really as randy said we need the regulators to come together and i mean i think it would be possible and sort of agree that you know from a certain time uh all the major spacefaring countries agree to include you know a certain set of minimum standards against light pollution and you know i was we'll also point out that there is actually a law that regulates or there's one single law that regulates light pollution from space and this is the u.s law against space advertising um which you know sort of came in via i think it was directed from the congress so it didn't sort of go through the regulatory process so i mean it it is possible tim if we add these uh these requirements these questions on uh already uh to uh you know the mega constellation prospects for mega constellations how does that change your prognosis and your predictions for the future would it actually slow down the the growth of mega constellations well i think one of the issues that has to be considered is the you know degree to which it makes people flee to regulatory jurisdictions which don't have these rules i mean you know it's already been a big issue in launch about you know what to what degree do you have to post bonds to what degree do you have to have insurance against casualties if something falls out of space and lands on someone's head you know all of these sorts of things is like well you know for a any satellite operator has to then take the decision of like well do i go to this country where it has these you know impositions maybe you know if that company's going to be really if that country is going to be really supportive of me and help the lobby to get myself you know in in the right place regulatory wise in terms of market access and maybe that's a trade off worth making on the other hand you're going to have a more fly-by-night operators going to countries which don't impose these rules and and that doesn't help anyone all right thank you for that listen last question i have to ask it because it was upvoted so much and we have to face you know this this conception this idea how do you avoid the concern that mega constellations are essentially appropriating certain orbits that the the sole occupant of a particular orbit that's a concern anyone want to weigh in well i would say it's not just orbits i mean clearly that when there's a lot at a particular altitude it gets very difficult for anyone else to launch that i worry at least as much about appropriating spectrum and we have this dilemma between the us rules and the itu rules with who you know who has priority who has to share you know you must say he doesn't respect the itu like he doesn't respect the securities and exchange commission you know when people say that sort of thing you know how do you resolve it i i don't know all right listen last uh last thoughts as we wrap it up um the idea that we have all these competing uses i think we presented kind of a whole buffet of issues and questions um maybe we can get to any particular answers though but any last thoughts please go ahead so i think um from my side um if i was in the position of an operator i'd actually be quite frustrated they've demonstrated perhaps my reliability of the systems they've innovated towards smaller satellites that are more capable they're addressed all the iodc concerns on an individual satellite basis you know i'd be quite frustrated at at the moment you know that they've really pushed forwards really quite effectively and um yet they're seeing all these concerns being raised still that the goalposts are shifting all the time but i think that's that's an ongoing process that they're going to have to deal with fair enough thank you for that i want to thank all my panelists for uh for offering their wisdom and their expertise in this last hour and we're now going to move directly into the next uh session the next panel on activating active debris removal so thank you to everyone and we go directly into our spotlight talk from Darren McKnight hello my name is Darren McKnight senior technical fellow for leo labs and i have the pleasure of starting off the session on activating active debris removal the vast majority of the debris generating potential in low earth orbit for leo resides in a few hundred massive derelict objects often abandoned in tight altitude clusters that amplify the probability of significant debris generating event as early as 2000 all of the major spacefaring agencies identified this pool of several hundred objects this list provided a clear story but it did not provide actual priorities recent analysis by a team of 19 global experts from 13 countries reduced to a stronger list into the top 50 prioritized list the top 20 objects were 20 sl 16 rocket bodies 18 of which are centered at 840 kilometers altitude as a side note the top 50 objects were roughly 80 abandoned before 2000 roughly 80 rocket bodies and roughly 80 of russian soviet origin further this year a new analytic tool was created the leo collision risk continuum which examined over 400 000 conjunction data messages or cdms issued by leo labs during the last half of 2020 these cdms included all objects against all objects the searchers aren't limited to the riskiest conjunctions for the largest objects only we let the data select the worst offenders the probability of each conjunction is multiplied by the total mass of the objects included this served as a surrogate for consequences if a collision happened to occur this total mass involved in each close approach and was used to obtain a risk value for this analysis of all objects in the space catalog the top four items were again SL 16 rocket bodies further the analysis clearly showed what had been hypothesized in the past from previous analyses the greatest risk to future debris growth is from potential collisions between massive derelicts abandoned decades ago not the small agile newly deployed small sats populating constellations further there are two altitude regimes that continue to rise up in all analyses as potential hot spots for future debris growth and therefore targets for adr these two regions are centered around 840 kilometers and 975 kilometers while active debris removal or adr as a remediation option is rapid and permanent there are some benefit to consider the general category of remediate in orbit to work cooperatively with adr this may be even more relevant for the most massive objects such as the SL 16s as their removal would definitely require control re-entry to assure limiting the probability of ground casualty to below the threshold of 1 in 10 000 just in time collision avoidance or jca and nanotugs are examples of remediate in orbit options jca calls for the use of either laser impulse or interaction with a ballistically launched cloud to nudge one of the two derelict objects from an imminent collision if a jca solution could be developed that was much less expensive and responsive than adr in conjunction dynamics accuracy improved this solution might become a valuable complement to adr for the most massive aderald objects similarly a nanotug is simply a small probably a 6u cube zap system that could be attached to an abandoned derelict object the nanotug comprises accelerometers electric thrusters gps receiver to in essence bring the derelict object back to life by providing the capability to perform collision avoidance maneuvers as necessary we are decades beyond the point of urgency of cleaning up mass deposited in leo decades ago whose collisional churning may adversely affect commercial and national security space system for decades to come this is especially true for constellations of satellite whose collective exposed area will make them uniquely susceptible to lethal non-trackable debris so as a popular press and regulators seem to be fixated on constellations as a catalyst for reduced space safety i propose that the constellations will end up being the victims of decades of complacency and debris remediation and debris mitigation policy and regulation thank you for your time we recognize the growing hazard of space debris and increasing congestion in earth's orbit we welcome all efforts public and commercial and debris removal and on-orbit servicing activities and undertake to encourage further institutional or industrial research and development of these services my name is ian christensen director of private sector programs for secure world foundation those were not my words but rather are quotes from a joint statement issued by the leaders of the g7 countries after their after their summit in england earlier this month the spotlight talk we just heard from darin mcknight gives us an idea of part of the reasons why the g7 countries might have made this statement the urgency of the need to address the orbital debris challenges indeed increasing following through on policy statements will require sustained attention to implementation technical research and development will surely be needed but it will also require understanding whether there is economic and business rationale or reason to tackle space debris in the next 55 minutes this panel on activating active debris removal plans to dive into these topics what can we do to spur government and industry alike to get serious about removing orbital debris we have a panel of experts well placed to look at this from multiple angles economics business and policy you can find their full bios on the summit website but i do want to brief briefly introduce each of them asha balakrishnan is a research staff member at the science and technology policy institute a federally funded research and development center that provides analysis of science and technology policy issues for the white house office of science and technology policy recently she has collaborated with colleagues on a number of reports on space situational awareness orbital debris issues space traffic management and small satellite technologies asha holds a degree a phd degree in mechanical engineering from the massachusetts institute of technology kallelia yako minow is a research fellow at the c-lab the space economy evolution lab of sd a bikoni school of management in malon she is currently a phd candidate in management and innovation at the catholic university of malon research institute her research interests include technological trends regarding regarding on orbit servicing economics reapply to space debris and the role of industry and public yay is the ceo and co-founder of a space garden or space space center the master degree in the charity we advise president for those who master skills global policy effort spaceflight safety and insurance services charity also serves as the chair of the u.s commercial space transportation advisory committee contact she holds a master degree in excited to discuss in my part of our panels on the virtual stage the first three four your first question today uh is going to go to colloquial so clearly at the start of this conference this morning the discussion of space's role in addressing climate change c-lab parallels between the challenges challenges here and introductory talk how would you describe the environmental challenge so thank you thank you hian thank you to to invite me to in this interesting event so as c-lab we started to study the space debris uh problems and we started when we started to analyze this problem we compare the space debris problem ecosystem with the climate change and we started to to analyze in particular what was something in the climate change so the comparison with the uh best the degradation of tropical forest loss so the cumulative problems and the cumulative effect regarding the natural ecosystem with the parallel with the orbit ecosystem so let me read that quote that was very important for us when we started to compare the orbital the debris problems with the climate change so the quote is the of the professor after the came that is uh was an american professor and an expert in uh in regulation so he developed a theory the theory of the small decision he said that the theory of the small decision is a situation in which a series of small individual rational decision cumulative result in a larger and the significant outcome which is a nature optimal nor the side and can negative change the context of choices even to the point where the side alternatives are irreversibly destroyed so it was uh this was this what is happening with the space debris and the challenges and the comparison that we did with the uh natural ecosystem and orbit ecosystem thank you clearly i understand there's some problems with my connection um so hopefully folks can hear me if not okay sounds like it's better so we'll we'll try this and if uh if my internet goes bad again we'll uh have to see if i have a colleague step in my apologies here so charity luke the next question is going to be basically the same question for both of you so maybe if i can have charity go first and then luke um once charity finishes and the question is what is your company doing to respond to the challenges that darin and clillia have just uh talked about what near-term mission milestones uh can we look for from your company so charity first and then to luke thank you great uh can you hear me in can you hear me i can hear you yes okay great just wanted to check uh thank you uh it's a pleasure to be here appreciate the invitation um so space sustainability is a growing market and an essential element of a robust space economy astroscale is on the leading edge of an emerging on-arbit services market we're developing technologies the business models and driving the policy discussions globally we support the management of the space environment via life extension in-situ space situation awareness end of life which is disposal of prepared objects and active debris removal which is disposal of unprepared objects key to these missions what many on-arbit services have in common are rendezvous and proximity operations docking and capture automation and ground support command and control and this is why our first in-orbit demo for end of life services will naturally advance efforts across all these business lines our very own lcd end of life services by astroscale demo is the first commercial mission to demonstrate end-to-end debris docking and removal and it launched in March of this year and we'll be testing a series of progressively difficult maneuvers to capture a prepared salate one equipped with a lightweight docking plate that was stacked with our servicer lcd has since passed its major operational checkups and we will begin the demonstrations later on the summer you can track lcd on our website and we are sharing ephemeris covariance and maneuver plans with both isa and the 18th notably this demonstration is entirely self-funded lcd is exciting because it's that first demonstration of an end-to-end debris docking and removal we see all debris as a threat to space commerce exploration national security critical services and our way of life and while small debris is clearly problematic it's also important to prevent large debris from becoming smaller pieces of debris by remediating those objects that pose the greatest threat last year astroscale was selected as commercial partner for jacks's commercial removal debris demonstration phase one which is the inspection of an upper stage rocket body expected to launch by 2023 finally let's not forget space sustainability also involves economic sustainability in orbit last year astroscale announced its entry into the satellite life extension market which adds value and ensures effective use of the limited natural resource that is geo so i'll just pause there and hand it over to duke thank you thank you for having me on this panel so clear space is a spin off from the epfl in lozan it's it's initially it's a team of engineers epfl that's been working since 2010 to find a solution to actually remove space debris from orbit and the project has initiated after launching a cubesat straight into the field of debris of the kosmos iridium collision which generated obviously a lot of conjunction notifications and and and really brought our team to start thinking to okay what what can what can be done and what should be done to address the growing problem of space debris clear space has been spun off in 2018 and we signed a contract with european space agency to lead the first debris removal mission where we have as objective to go pick up a piece of debris that belongs to the european space agency um in orbits and remove it by end of 2025 this mission called clear space one is um is a is um is is is the first mission to execute the complete value chain of removing a piece of debris from orbit addressing all the different dimension whether legal legal challenges uh liability challenges but also technical challenges and how to actually pick up a non-corporative object in orbit today clear space is about 40 employees we work with an extensive industrial team across europe and we're in the first phases of the development of our mission all right thank you charity thank you luke and i think we'll have time to come back to some of these activities and in the subsequent discussions i'm already seeing um some questions in the chat that have to do with the specifics of astroscale and clear space mission so well we'll get to those towards the end of the panel as well today here um but i want to turn now to uh to asha um so i referenced the g7 statement at the beginning of this uh panel and we've also seen in the u.s. national space policy a goal to evaluate and pursue active debris removal and in january of this year we saw the nasa inspector general uh issuer report the office of the inspector general issuer issuer report that argues that mitigation alone is not sufficient and that we need more strategic remediations uh strategic remediation activities to address space debris can you tell us about the current state of u.s. government activities regarding active debris removal sure thank you for inviting me on to talk about this topic so um in addition in january not just the oig from nasa issued a report but the ostp the office of science technology policy the white house also issued a national orbital debris research and development plan which laid out some of the research priorities for all areas with respected debris so there were kind of three major thrusts in that one was um debris mitigation one was tracking and characterization of debris which is very related to ssa and stm and the third one really for the first time in sort of a national level document like this they um addressed remediation of debris as a core element or a core area and they they then further sort of described three particular research and development efforts that um agencies should move forward with and these were develop remediation repurposing technologies and techniques for large debris objects as well as the same type of thing but not repurposing technologies but remediation technologies and techniques for small debris objects so similar to kind of what darin was talking about there are many ways to go about this and that paper of 50 derelict objects they're very large ones that that that one could could um try and and remove for the purposes of removing risk long term but then there's also a lot of discussion with respect to lethal non-trackable debris that's you know could be mission-ending and so they identified two areas and then the third one which i think is a really important area and it's one that i think a lot of the people on this panel have talked about is developing models for risk and cost benefit analysis and i think that everybody sort of feels like there are models out there they may touch on some aspects of risk or some aspects of um a pertinent certain type of debris but we really haven't seen sort of a holistic model looking at all of the trade-offs between between the impacts of the probabilities as well as the different orbits and the regimes and then and and sort of the numbers of satellites that are going up in that area and not just technical risk but also economic risk as well um i would say the the last thing is you know we do need better data so that tracking and characterization piece that is part of the r&d plan is a really important piece because the models are only as good as the data that we have and i i fear that for the large debris we have you know better data and there's more work going on with some of the nc2 ssa and and some improvements and space vents and coming online and those kinds of things but i think on the small debris scale we don't have um as much good data that has really um good accuracy to it to really understand the environment enough so i would say lastly on the adr technology and where the where the u.s. government is i think they're still in the this is a long term thing and that there is no one agency that has the mission nor the funding to do this and so that's where we're stuck we're stuck with that when it comes to space traffic management we're stuck with that when it comes to to adr as well so i feel like there needs to be a little bit of uh unsticking in in the government realm yeah indeed the the who uh and then what one agency in that question is one that is is coming up in several different areas of u.s. space policy right now and um seems good well it's not a means to it either um so i think maybe uh that might again be another one that we come back to here um as we go because i think that relates um it certainly relates to the previous panel with the space traffic management question and it relates to this as well so um speaking of the previous panel um that previous panel we just had a good discussion of some of the challenges that that the policy and regulatory structure for these large constellations uh pose and the the topic of debris certainly came up in that discussion um as well darin in his talk suggested that these large constellation operators might actually potentially be a victim of some of this regulatory attention in that the existing risk from the large objects is is where some of the real challenges and these constellations are operating in that environment right um so i want to pose a question uh to you charity your company has worked with one of these large constellation operators and some technology development programs along with the european space agency what is the role of the large constellation community in addressing the debris challenge on orbit uh well yeah just great to point out that astroscale did announce a partnership with one web in may to develop an elsa that can conduct multiple end of life disposals and you know per your comment on darin he's he always does make good points uh darin like debris approximately 8 000 tons of it is a real threat to operators in orbit however as we increase the use of orbit we need to prevent additions to this derelict population right so any additions pose a threat to creating those lethal non-trackable that ash was talking about but also interrupt critical services in commerce by requiring more collision avoidance maneuvers so even if they devote deorbit within the international norm of 25 years they're still creating a perturbation if you will on uh the normal operations in orbit large constellations are exciting and they bring a wealth of benefits just here on earth and i personally know people in communities who are benefiting from the proliferation of access to space but we can't add to the population of debris in space now and and we need to be responsive to new hazards and congestions uh so this means one of two things for constellation providers and really all operators in space either ensure high high reliability of satellites which might be rather expensive or have a plan for a controlled disposal at end of mission regulators under article 6 of the outer space treaty need to make sure one of these two options happen and there's no middle ground here in terms of space safety so what does this mean and how do we get from here that's the you know major question at hand i i feel the first step is to measure accurately what that risk of a system is meaning the entire system's risk needs to be measured for probability of collision next we need to cap that risk no one wants excessive or unlimited risk in this business it would simply drive investors away and third proper monitoring is needed of this risk profile that constellations are imposing on the space environment right now there are educated guesses of at best of how a constellation may impact environment how about a near real time update as the system is deployed and finally there is no use making limits if regulators aren't going to enforce said limits so sure customer access to the benefit of a constellation should be economic natural economic driver to limit debris but what if it's not well then governments are ultimately liable for private operator activity so there should be financial carrots and sticks as asha mentioned the economic drivers here that drive responsible behaviors in space and limit debris so just foot stomping we're all in this together operational satellites that can maneuver around debris are good things transparency and information sharing among operators to understand who's doing what is a good thing space situational awareness is a good thing space traffic coordination and management is a good thing but inactive satellites without collision avoidance raining down through operational orbits and human spaceflight is not a good thing and i don't care if that takes two five or 25 years to deorbit i count current large debris objects among the items that are not conducive to a successful space environment or space economy thank you jerry and we're seeing i'm seeing a lot of questions coming in in the the audience here so this is good i've got a couple more i want to ask that we that we discussed in advance but we're going to get to those those audience questions so keep them coming so clearly this next one i'm going to go i'm going to turn to you so both asha and jerry now have mentioned the need to create economic incentives and possibly you know the consequences and and enforcement penalties that might come along with that from your standpoint does the rise of large constellations does that pose or offer any sort of solution or relationship to the economic challenge of addressing space debris does it kind of change the way that we think about the economics of the space debris challenge so this was the the point that helped us as a resort center when we started our resort so and in particular the question that guide has was is the market that can solve the problem of the space debris or we need the government intervention in order to solve this kind of problem so i i did before the parallel with the climate change that was a useful example to understand the role of the public and also the private sector for sure this question so is is the market that that can solve this problem so we try to answer to this question through a simulation of different scenarios so so we try to understand the first of all the risk so if the risk of collision is in the medium term or sorry in the short term in the medium term on the long term so this for short change the position of the private sector in order to invest in such technologies and we started the first of all to understand which kind of technologies that the private sector can use and have the economic incentive to use in order to avoid and to solve the problem of the space debris and we we analyze the the the mitigation of for example post mission disposal or collision avoidance technologies active debris removal technology so we saw that this technology in a stack to mitigate the risk of collision and in particular the the post mission disposal solution was in our in our point of view first of all a good solution to solve to mitigate the collision because we saw the curve of the risk lower than the the curve of the risk of collision so this this was the the in in our conclusion a cheap solution for the private sector in order to have economic incentive to invest and to use the post mission disposal for sure if the risk isn't the short term if the risk in other scenarios so that was in the long term I don't think that the private sector would use this kind of solution so to use its their fuel in order to the orbit the satellites so I think that in the long term scenario we saw and I think that the private sector decided to to leave their satellites to to fail to to to the orbit and I think that in this case the active debris removal is needed for the death satellite in this case but also for for the active debris removal is a question that I asked myself but also when I talk with my colleagues is that is there the market for the active debris removal yeah so I think you're hitting on I think a number of themes there right one that we've talked a lot already in this panel about the need to have a good understanding characterization of the technical and economic risk and being able to communicate that across actors you're also talking about you know active debris removal is part of an overall scope of responses that operators use to talk you need to take here including you know simply post mission disposal compliances is important and operating and the business plan so Luke turning to you now so Chloe I talked about you know whether if there is or is not a private market for active debris removal your company is trying to find that market right that is what both you and then part and part of aster skills business as well right so outside of technology what factors do we need to have further development in to enable the commercial debris removal market well I think to to reflect on what has been said until now I agree with Darren I write that large object or a major issue and have to be addressed and I agree with charity that we have to build up a solution that is sustainable for the future I think the first thing is that we we have to overall generally whether if it's agencies or commercial commercial operation recognize the complete cost of space operation and the complete cost of space operation means the complete cost of a sustainable space operation and in this cost removal of debris has to be included you cannot consider that you looked at the complete mission so okay now it flies we paid for it we operated we operated this platform with a satellite for a while everything's okay whether it's fails or not in orbit and often what has been done in the past is that when you look at the overall cost of a space mission you would go all the way up to the point where the satellite fails in orbit or is the orbited if it has been the orbited and I think this is not the complete cost the complete the complete cost should include also the the orbiting and specifically I mean in if you follow the the logic of Darren specifically for for the most dangerous and problematic objects in orbit to start with and this means that the first thing that has to happen is that agencies has to start looking at the object they have an orbit is okay what kind of project can we put in place to make sure that we don't produce a situation which will affect everyone in the future but then beyond that I think this has to be also integrated in the business case for commercial operators and the question then is what is the dynamics the financial dynamics that makes that the payment of that kind of service is just a natural a step of a complete business case so I think this this dimension is really important regulation we have a lot of regulation today that are in place already there's a lot of things that are just not applied I think and and the other part that is happening right now that we can see happening much faster than we actually expected when we created their space is the is the the conscience of the problem right I remember for years before we created their space people would tell us nobody will ever pay for that nobody will ever pay for the orbit mission why would anybody pay for that doesn't make any sense right you just removing a piece of debris to make space for the others I mean it's it's the tragedy of the commons there's no reason why somebody should ever pay for that and when we created clear space when we founded the company at the beginning we thought it's gonna it's gonna be hard to find investors so we should find sponsors to actually make a demonstration and we were surprised to see how quickly everything evolved and we see that the timing is right to affect change today so what has to be done is first I think that agencies start thinking about the object in orbit I think what's interesting actually in the list of the 15 more dangerous object in orbit is that there's not a single American one in the list what is just one I think there should be more transparency about what's up there there should be a conscience in the in the agency start and think okay how do we put in place a budget that makes sure that we that we increase the space of operational orbits there's some orbits where a constellation already cannot operate today which are there's some orbits where you can already see kessler's syndromes appearing right so you see that's happening already today it's a very slow evolving a problem but it's it's already there so the first step for me is I think is those list I agree with Darren that those list of 50 objects have to be addressed and and agree with charity we have to build up the constellations in a way that takes in accounts all the different outcomes of an end of mission and actually just addresses them in a consistent logical way thank you Luke and you've you've you've teed up the the question I want to start with from the audience we almost like we planned this but we just worked out this way so you were you were talking at the end of that remark about how to you know communicate the value and the need to start working on these top 50 objects and to start working on on integrating you know this into the business case of the large constellations and designing those to operate safely and sustainably so the question yeah so the the question I'm going to put up on the screen here shortly here I'm going to ask Asha to start and then the other panelists to come in so Asha as we try to communicate the need to address debris to remove the large objects to figure out how to field active debris removal services but how should we how should we as a community be communicating that to lawmakers and to policymakers is there anything you've seen in your experience where messaging has worked well or perhaps has not and then I'll let the other panelists come in as they as they think there um so I haven't seen much in my experience in terms of like moving this forward to get sort of the you know ssa and stm you know we're still waiting on that uh I think that with respect to adr though one thing that I think might work if we if not we I'm not an advocate here but if one was to pull a story together about the cost now versus the cost later I think you have to think about you know it might seem expensive now with lots of dollar signs or euros but if you waited and it created a more kind of much more untenable situation down the line than the cost or move millions of pieces of debris if things ended up colliding or you know so that that comes back to the data and that comes back to the models so we need to be able to have really robust models with good data right not data that we took you know and shuttle windows in 2011 or 20 you know 2009 for for for um predicting what the debris environment is we need really you know good data on the small debris side as well as the large one to feed into these models so we can convince ourselves of understanding you know what does it look like down the line and if we did this now yes it's going to cost money but it's going to cost a lot less than if we did it later thank you for that charity um asha reminds me of a great quote from darin um pay me now or pay me more later is is essentially what he says there's a good paper at isc on that recommend everyone read that and just just to quickly add on this really comes down to domestic priorities right those policy priorities uh clearly europe and japan uh have made it a priority to invest in research and development for debris removal and therefore there are programs and i feel that adr and just generically on our resources writ large check a lot of domestic priority boxes for the united states in particular of international collaboration technology development growing the industry national security application to exploration and just simple leadership you know being involved and making sure that the united states is is involved in uh ensuring you know the norms and leading the rules and the norms and behavior on this sort of activity as well so the stars are aligned uh it just needs action like other domestic priorities do i mean i think we could certainly interpret the g7 statement as you know a recognition of wanting to take that leadership that that you're talking about their cherry but you know it's now it's a good statement let's work on the on the follow through and yeah providing that the story and implementation that needs to be provided um all right so uh we are fully into the audience q and a portion here so um we're going to jump around to some uh to some different subjects here as we go but i'm sure the same some same commonality and threads will come up um so uh the the next one um it kind of goes uh towards uh you know spurring action and and some of the tools that we might or might not use um and so collily i'm going to put you on the spot uh to answer this first and then other panelists might might come in because there's a little bit of economic theory behind this that um so uh with a prize model or a bounty model uh provide an effective incentive uh to remove some of these hazardous objects that we're talking about yes it was was mentioned before so i think that uh uh if we demonstrate that the risk is now so is not in the long term but isn't the short term i think that is the important point to to um to change the government attitude to fund to fund the technologies or to find the private sector in order to take the action to mitigate the the the space debris so this is the the point that i want to stress about that to understand to demonstrate uh the the risk because this is the one point that can convince the governments to take an action and it was happening with the the environment on earth so before you mentioned that if we we pay now invest now in the future we you know we will have uh less cost about to invest to technologies and this is true so if we invest now to the technologies to help the private sector in order to avoid and to mitigate the risk also there are several options that the government can do is to fund to fund the technologies so all through the public private partnership is a good solution in order to um to invest in technologies such as active debris removal because we know that the active debris removal is a costly solution if we compare these technologies with other technology technologies so this was uh we the logic that we we did when we started our research so to understand to compare the cost of the different solution and we know that the active debris removal is a costly technologies and there is the need of the government to co-fund this kind of solution and the public private partnership would be uh so an option in order to to help uh the private sector so that's a an interesting suggestion that that use of the the ppp model which we've seen for other areas of of kind of government and commercial cooperation on on space system development with success might be something that that we look at here and I think there are there are elements of public private partnership in both some of the both the clear space mission and some of the the astroscale partnerships as well so I think that is something that the governments are are looking at um all right so the next round of questions is going to be a lightning round for our astroscale and clear space colleagues we have a lot of questions um in the chat about where you guys are going what your missions look like and and how you interact with each other so Asha and Chloe I mean you can chime in if you have anything on there but it might be a brief break for you so um putting the question up but uh the the first question just gonna get started here um clear space and astroscale are you guys competitors and are there others in your market space if you are so uh Luke and Luke and uh Charity I don't know who wants to who wants to take that one on but but go for it I think I think to be competitor there should be the market already probably um uh it it is uh we we have regular interactions and and and we obviously see each other because we we are trying to produce the same change in the industry maybe with a different approach in different regions um but at the end we what we see is that the market when it activates to to actually address all that requires more than both of our companies to actually address the complete problem so there there's plenty of room uh to do a lot of work um right right now what we can see is that we we are active while in Europe we're active together astroscale is active in in the UK uh but otherwise I mean we we are on a European mission astroscale is on a Japanese mission uh the question is how far can international collaboration work and and that's one of the question that will at some point come up mostly also because for many uh the ADR technologies are considered as dual use right and there can be limitations and strategic interests from different countries around that um but yeah I think at the end we we might likely end up competing on the on some market and collaborating some others I'll just echo some of what Luke said maybe less competitors and more pioneers aren't we Luke uh in this space and and really this industry needs to be collaborative at this moment very moment we need to get together to build those policy and best practices to conduct these operations safely as a small difference between our companies I feel astroscale is looking at a whole suite of on-orbit services in a number of orbits ADR is just one of those missions right you if you can rendezvous with uh another object in orbit you can provide in situ ssa life extension you know maintenance etc etc um and just a shout out to those industry associations and industry groups that are driving best practices and making sure this is a sustainable and safe um market is the consortium for the execution of rendezvous and servicing of course there's other ad hoc groups like the space safety coalition uh and I know that uh you know probably Luke's company and and astroscale we're part of many many discussions with our industry colleagues so it needs to be collaborative thank you and you know so we had a question there that you already both have already spoken to about whether you're you know doing the same thing or our definitive differences it's a little bit of a little bit of both right I like charity I like the phrasing you know pioneers uh not competitors right because as Luke said you know make the market and then compete for the market um so uh Luke you've already teed up the next question um very nicely um you keep doing that for me so thank you um the uh there's a question from the audience um so Luke you mentioned there's some potential dual use implications of some of this technology right for adr for servicing um so the question is are your companies doing anything to make sure that adr operations don't create security concerns and so what is the relationship between you know civil adr technology that we're talking about in this panel and some of the the national security implications that that might I think for uh to do a mission that has uh national security implication you have to be placed on the right orbit you you have to get uh notarization to launch um this means that uh you would have either to have notarization by launching state that that actually knows what you're planning to do because you have to provide a lot of content a lot of detail about what you're gonna do in orbit especially if you do you know in orbit servicing this is already quite a deterrent the other aspect is that um we look at it for us it's quite obvious that the solution we're building is is a sustainability solution that that's what we're after that's what we try to build and and I'm certain the astroscale as well uh we want to address a fundamental problem and um in our perspective that there's a lot of dimension that can make uh if you want to deabilitate or break a satellite or a military satellite you you you don't necessarily need to actually capture it you you you need to collide with it you need to do other stuff and there's probably ways that are much more cost-effective to actually do that than actually do the complete exercises we we do it in addition to that I think that it's a little like an ambulance you don't use an ambulance for warfare uh mostly because you know that if you start to do that the cost benefits in terms of of of your complete exercise makes it uh illogical right it you you have more to lose than to win if you if you start using it this way so that that's the way we look at it maybe it's a little naive when it comes to military application but for us it's clearly the approach is very clearly and has to remain a sustainability uh solution that we we are building here nevertheless it's a solution that is dual use and will be classified as dual use um what we export and what we how we addressed it because the question obviously came in from the Swiss government when we uh when we started working on the first mission for ESA the question came up and it it comes up on a regular basis what we export is a service and not uh not the spacecraft or the technology itself uh i'll just add that astroscale categorically is against the deliberate creation of debris and orbit okay that is incredibly important and that is our ethos and the reason why we stood up as a company beyond that the government uh sort of point fingers here can be the worst offender of debris generating um a debris generation and orbit especially the last six decades so we feel that government should be customers of our services right to prevent um debris incidents from occurring um just you know echoing luke uh you know private operators are regulated uh by domestic um domestic nations and therefore we have to adhere to space safety standards we also are pushing norms of behavior best practices in this uh skate in this uh market as well and you know as i said we're regulated and want to develop uh solutions not create problems so that's all i say about that so thank you and i think you know an important point that i think both of you are talking about right is you know we discussed earlier transparency and sharing of information right and there's going to be you know a civil commercial mission there's going to be a you know an emphasis on transparency and and information sharing always we hope that helps to distinguish those sorts of activities from something that might be more national security in nature um so thank you charity and luke for the clear space and astroscale uh portion of this uh of this questioning i'm going to try and open up to a broader question now the number of questions in the chat about you know um removing uh spent rocket bodies right and we know the majority of those bodies are russian and um and the chinese ones as well right from the top 50 list um there's a there's a legal and policy question here around uh permissions to to use to remove those objects responsibility to remove those objects and liability associated that right so a broad question about what legal and policy tools can we think about to address nations that do not consent to the removal of their derelict objects or to encourage those nations to to start participating in removal of those objects so um open to anyone on the panel who wants to to try to take that thorny issue on did that not come through no it's a little better now though um i'm not going to be able to answer that question i think that's a really really hard question i think we're all sort of silent because we don't know this is really an international cooperation diplomacy issue i mean this has to this cannot be solved by technology development when one of the things that we when we um helped support sort of the orbital debris uh r&d plan we looked at okay what are the big challenges in orbital debris you know irrespective of r&d what are the major challenges and then what can r&d solve and r&d can solve some of the challenges but they cannot solve the liability challenge they cannot solve you know um post mission disposal people complying with the 25 year rule they cannot solve the the registration challenge and so these are things that have to happen on the diplomatic efforts and you know i i'm now going to step back and feign that you know although i'm a panel policy analyst i'm an engineer and i'm not the diplomat so i'll add in that when we say we look to leadership of this sort of issue this is what we're talking about we'd like to see nations get together and discuss what is that pathway forward before technology catches up to that to that eventuality because technology will run fast here and we hope that nations will be able to have an open dialogue and come to some sort of solution and i think if i can also add to it um i think that there's some there's some good news in the complete in the situation there've been collaboration where objects from different countries including russia and us docked in orbit right and this happened in the past this kind of collaboration was possible in the past and uh this is a field where we have to put aside where governments have to put aside a competition on on the military scale to really look into collaborating to address a common problem and it if it has been possible for the iss it has to be possible for the brewery removal and because because we all coexist in the same environment we all benefit from the same environment and this cannot be treated in a usual competitive way it's not possible all right so we are unfortunately almost coming to the end of our time already um there are well too many questions in the chat that i'm going to be able to get to but i do want to um go one round around the table here with a with a wrap-up question and give everybody a minute and a half to try to to try to wrap up all of the great thoughts um in for every time so um in the spotlight talk darin told us or suggested that we are decades beyond urgency in addressing the orbital debris challenge um so in a minute and a half or so what is the immediate next step that we must take to start addressing that urgency to start solving that that that gap so um just go around um i will pick on uh charity to start let's see at the bottom of the screen see if you can place it sure um i i think that's a great approach you know a lot of folks are thinking of active debris removal of you know it's decades away and we have time but we don't have time so what can we do now right right now uh and then what do we build on uh to get ready so i i really think domestic national priority on space environment management active debris removal whatever you want to call it make it a priority make it a statement and and have that drive the discussions of who owns it how are you going to fund their r&d uh aspects to it how are we going to develop the ppp and the economic models how are we going to do the international pieces but it all starts with you know laying down the policy so get the policy right luke well there's not much to add to what charity just said that's uh i think for us we see it exactly the same way i think governments have to to lead the to to lead the first efforts is in europe it's already the case i think he's demonstrates that uh today there's more european uh agencies that are starting looking into that so so this is moving in japan as well and i think this should be a global effort there's another dimension is really this dimension of building up international collaboration to address uh to address those problems and that's something that has to be driven probably with a very similar model that what has been done for for the iss glalia you're next on my screen so i think in my opinion that i'm a researcher so what is my my job is to to understand the different solution that we have on the table so and we discussed the different solution about the ppp solution but if we go through this way uh we have to think about if there is a market to sustain these ppp model and to understand how the business model of active debris removal is based on is based on to give profit to private sector or to save the profits so this is a distinction that is important to understand how to develop a sustainable business model of the active debris removal so this is the first um i think that that uh i wanted to share with you but the second thing is that if it's not sustainable so if it's not sustainable the ppp model of it is not sustainable to think about is the if the market can have the incentive economic incentive to solve this problem alone for sure we need the intervention of legislation so and to think about if we need for budding legislative intervention or if we need the other solution for example to pay a fee so each satellite operator pay a fee in order to invest in in this kind of technical solution so depends on the risk as i said before if the risk is now or if the risk is a long term and then to position an intervention on the public and private sector in different ways along this timeline asha last word great um so i'm gonna give two since i have a last word um one is i really do think we have to develop these these risk and cost benefit models that clearly is talking about and and develop them in a holistic way that's transparent and people buy into so i think we really need the evidence behind whatever next steps are going to take i would say secondly and i do not speak on behalf of anybody i speak on behalf of myself and representing you know the science technology policy institute i do not represent the u.s government here but i do think that the us is losing an opportunity to get in on in terms of technology development in adr technology and to to help um to both look at their own missions as uh as an example of a customer to use these technologies down the line but also to drive to buy down risk and try and better understand some of the challenges that we have on the policy side on some of the concerns we have on the legal and policy side and work that out it it can't we can't admire the problem so much more unless we go forward and do it and in order to do it we need action from at least in the u.s we do need some direction on which agency is going to take the lead in doing it and who's going to be funded to do it all right so thank you all um so you know to to activate active debris removal we need uh we need to know that governments must act we need to get environmental management space environmental management policy in place international cooperation it was essential we have some models that we can consider for that the iss cooperation public private partnerships uh then we really need to understand what the technical and cost benefit risks and analyses are uh in sustainable active debris removal businesses models and the uh the overall risk portfolio in orbit um and we have to look for opportunities for leadership and we need a u.s government um champion to step up and and take this responsibility so uh very simple straightforward steps that we need to do but i'm sure that uh i'm sure that we have ample opportunities to continue this conversation and we've identified some good uh some good work to go forward so thank you to the panelists i wish we could keep talking thank you to the audience for the great for the uh the number of questions that were submitted uh again i wish we could get to them all but we certainly had a good discussion um i want to welcome my colleague uh crystal back uh up on stage our conference chair here to take us out for the day thank you all right well thank you ian and thank you again to all of our panelists from all three of our sessions today i really couldn't be happier with what we've been able to bring you with the discussions that we've had and with the opportunities for follow-up that this gives us so just to let you all know this is day one we're concluding now um starting tomorrow we're going to have another day of packed content for you uh two panels uh one on the space race or what we really should call it the second on the space force and what should be really focusing on what should be its prime directive and then i'm also incredibly pleased to offer you two keynotes one is an interview style keynote i was tori bruno from ula and one is batia law a senior advisor at nasa to hear a little bit about the biden administration's priorities on space sustainability so join us tomorrow if you know anyone else you'd like to invite please have them register and we are excited for our event to continue thank you so much