 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone in whatever time zone you may happen to be right now. Welcome to this Secure World Foundation webinar on capacity building for space sustainability. My name is Peter Martinez. I'm the Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation, and I have the pleasure of being your host and a panel moderator for today's event. I'm joined by my colleagues, Victoria Samson, the Director of our Washington DC office, and Dr. Brian Whedon, our Director of Program Planning. Together we will be co-moderating this event. Before starting our program, let me say a few words about Secure World Foundation. We are a private operating foundation based in the United States, but with a global perspective and reach. Our vision is the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space contributing to global peace, prosperity, and stability on Earth. We work with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society organizations in pursuit of this vision. Today's event focuses on capacity building for the implementation of the space sustainability guidelines recently adopted by the United Nations. We have a great lineup of panelists to discuss this topic today, many of whom were deeply involved in the process of negotiating these guidelines over a period of eight years. For those of you who are not familiar with this UN process, let me take a few moments to provide the context for today's webinar. Additional context will be provided by our panelists. As we know, space is becoming increasingly congested and contested. We're seeing a rapidly growing number and diversity of space actors, the emergence of new kinds of space activities, and the emergence of very large constellations of satellites that will increase the number of satellites in orbit, possibly by an order of magnitude or more in the coming decades. This is all happening in an orbital environment where space debris from the first 50 years of the space age already poses concerns for the safety of space flight. If we could please transition to the slide of the UN guidelines. Thank you. In June of 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or UN corpus as it's known, adopted a set of 21 voluntary consensus guidelines for the long-term sustainability of outer space activities, the so-called LTS guidelines. I had the privilege and the pleasure of being the chair of this process and therefore I'm especially delighted to be here with all of you today discussing the implementation of these UN guidelines with colleagues that I worked with during that time. And on the right-hand side of the slide you see the adoption copy of the the text of the guidelines which was signed by many of the the delegates who were present at the time that 92 member states of corpus joined consensus on these guidelines and indeed a number of today's speaker signatures appear on the document that you see projected on the right-hand side of the screen. Before getting into the description of the guidelines it may be worth just briefly recounting the corpus definition of space sustainability and I quote here from the document. The corpus has defined the long-term sustainability of outer space activities as the ability to maintain the conduct of space activities indefinitely into the future in a manner that realizes the objectives of equitable access to the benefits of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes in order to meet the needs of the present generations while preserving the outer space environment. Those of you who are familiar with the Brundtland report on sustainable development will recognize some obvious parallels between this definition and the often quoted definition of sustainable development on earth. These 21 LTS guidelines comprise a collection of internationally recognized measures for ensuring the long-term sustainability of outer space activities and for enhancing the safety of space operations. The guidelines are grouped into four categories namely policy and regulatory framework for space activities, the safety of space operations, international cooperation, capacity building and awareness and lastly the scientific and technical research and development related to space sustainability. The guidelines are relevant to all space activities and to all phases of a space mission including launch operation and end-of-life disposal. In negotiating these guidelines states rely heavily on the input of their public and private sector entities with extensive experience in the safe conduct of space activities. Time does not permit me to go into the details of these guidelines in this brief introduction but the guidelines are described more fully in the Secure World Foundation fact sheet that was referred to in the invitation to this event and we will also make a link available in the chat as well. I should mention that these guidelines represent the first fruits of the corpus space sustainability discussions and that this forum decided in 2019 to establish a new working group with a five-year mandate to discuss these topics and possibly also new guidelines a sort of LTS 2.0 process if you like. However the focus of our discussions today is on the implementation of the already adopted 21 LTS guidelines. These guidelines will only have their intended effect if they are implemented as widely as possible by the international space community. However not all space actors may have the necessary capacity to do so and even advanced space actors may have some capacity gaps hence capacity building for the implementation of these guidelines will be essential to ensure their effectiveness and that is the focus of today's event where we will explore the roles of governments and IGOs the private sector and civil society organizations in building capacity to implement the LTS guidelines. Can we transition to the slide of the panelists please? We have assembled a group of leading international experts many of whom were deeply involved in the development and negotiation of these LTS guidelines to address the issue of capacity building from their perspectives in government, in industry and in civil society. We will be introducing each of our panelists to you shortly at the start of the three panel discussions this morning. The panels will be moderated by myself by my colleague Victoria Samson and Ryan Whedon. I also take this opportunity to thank our logistics team Brian sorry Josh Walney and Jan Asher who are handling things behind the scenes. Thank you to the two of them. The discussions will take the form of three 30-minute panel discussions focusing on each of these sectors. We will start with the civil society perspective. We will then move on to the industry perspective and finally we will address the issue of capacity building from the perspective of governments and international intergovernmental organizations. The format of the discussions in each of the panels will be the same. The panelists have been asked to identify the top three capacity gaps in their sector and they recommended top three priority interventions to address these capacity gaps. After the three panels we will have some time for moderated Q&A and I will describe shortly how the US participants can engage in that regard. Can we have the slide on questions please? So this is how you would ask a question. You find the Q&A button at the bottom of the your zoom window and click on that. You will then see the questions that have already been posed by other participants. If you have a question similar to one that's already been proposed you can vote it up. If you don't see your question already listed there feel free to enter your question. We will of course look at all the questions and try to address as many of them as possible in the time available for Q&A. So with those remarks I would now like to hand over to the moderator of the first panel Dr. Brian Whedon. He will be leading our panel on civil society. Thank you very much Peter and welcome to everybody for this discussion. So I'm joined today by a great selection of individuals who represent a very diverse set of organizations that fall into what we think of as civil society. Civil society is essentially the academia, non-government organizations, think tanks, sort of all those sorts of different organizations and individuals outside of governments and industry that can have an impact on governance and how things work. So we're going to open up with my friend David Kendall. He's the co-founder of the Outer Space Institute. Dave is a former senior official with the Canadian Space Agency, chair of the United Nations Committee on the Peace Leases of Outer Space and a former professor at the International Space University. They're going to transition to Jean-Jacques Couture. He is the director of the European Space Institute in Vienna, Austria. Previously he served as the secretary general of ASD Euro Space, which is a major trade association in the European industry. We're then going to move to Goyou Wang. He is the dean of the Academy of Air and Space Policy and Law at the Beijing Institute of Technology and the deputy director of the China National Space Administration Space Law Center. And he's also a legal counselor with the CNSA Lunar Exploration and Space Project Center. He's also, just recently, a member of the advisory committee of Secure World Foundation. Finally, but definitely not least, we have Danielle Wood. She is a system professor in the program of the Media Arts and Sciences and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Astronautics and Aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Within the Media Lab, Professor Wood leads the Space-Enabled Research Group, which seeks to advance justice and earth complex systems using designs enabled by space. So to get things started, Dave, please go ahead and kick us off. Thank you very much and I will start just by adding a little bit about UN Copius. Some of the listeners to this webinar may not be totally familiar with UN Copius, although I'm sure most are. Just to remind people, UN Copius is a very important body in the space world. It was set up in 1959, so we're talking about 61 years of discussions here. It's based in Vienna in Austria. It's one of the largest of the United Nations committees and it currently has 95 full members of and all of the space nations are members, full members of the committee. It is a very interesting body in that it meets three times a year. It has two subcommittees, one legal subcommittee and one scientific and technical subcommittee, and then there's a plenary as well. The everything that happens in and is approved in UN Copius is done by consensus. This was mentioned by Peter, but it's a very important fact that in order to put anything through and get anything out of UN Copius, all 95 of the states have to agree to every word of the recommendation or whatever's coming out of course. It also has 42 permanent observer organizations which make it a very interesting group because it also does have the feed-in from from really what is civil society. So we're talking about civil society here and that those permanent organizations were very helpful I think in developing the guidelines that we're talking about. It just to remind people what are the major accomplishments of UN Copius. Of course the five UN treatise plus many principles and guidelines relating to space are all and really where UN Copius comes I think into play is that it's the only really global body that is talking about all of the aspects of of the peaceful uses of outer space. It does not deal of course with the military aspects of outer space and that is an important issue which comes under the Conference of Disarmament which is another topic of discussion at some point but that's not a very but that is on the on the non-peaceful side it is a little a little more even more challenging let's say to get some some agreements there. Okay I'm going to quickly go into what I've been asked to talk about and I'm going to go this through this very quickly in order to keep within my six minutes which I will do. The top three capacity gaps in general it is in my opinion a lack of knowledge by civil society of the guidelines. I talked to many people I'm sure there are many people on on the line here listening in who really do not know a lot about the they probably heard of them but they don't know very much about them. In civil society there are some that are aware that they exist but I think by virtue of the very broad scope of the guidelines most individuals I think do not know either how to describe them in detail or how to incorporate them into their work their thinking or their activities. So and that supplementary to this is the fact that most people who do not understand the obligation of states to implement the guidelines so the general sense that there are they are not legally binding and thus maybe just simply can be ignored and even those who know about the guidelines in detail I think the sheer complexity of the mostly long and precise descriptions of each of the 21 guidelines which is actually necessitated by the UN process leaves many people unsure how to either describe or utilize them and here I I like to just tell you that the outer space treaty the Magna Carta of of all space activities contains 17 articles 2,500 words and 73 paragraphs in 229 lines I just was checking this on the LTS guidelines the 21 guidelines in the preamble are 10,300 words 212 paragraphs and 781 lines they are a mouthful to get through they really are so I think this is one of the issues that we are dealing with and a capacity gap as to why civil society and others do not implement them so very quickly I have a minute left by far the most important issue in explaining the LTS guidelines and importance to sustainability and I'm glad that Peter mentioned also safety and security because I think those three things go in in hand in hand they require a lot more writing in popular magazines newspapers op-ed pieces etc describing the significant issues and how these guidelines help number two I think it's important in my opinion to write a simplified primer I think in US they call it a primer but I would call it a primer to explain the importance of the current guidelines and to elucidate in more general terms what they are and how their implementation can significantly decrease the risk of potential catastrophes and I would lastly say that perhaps an open letter that is being has been signed by very prominent space people that is well circulated might help I'm going to stop there thank you so much thank you David that was a great way to kick us off Jean-Choq please well thank you very much Brian for this this introduction I will try to to say further on the same lines as Peter did and and and actually thank you very much David for having counted all the words and lines of the of the various documents for us it was quite enlightening now the the gaps that I would like to put forward today are the first one is that actually it is true and I can only confirm that the civil society has a very limited involvement in outer space management and outer space affairs there are a few representatives of civil society as observers to the copials that are at best consulted in an informal matter it is also true that civil society has very limited means to weigh on the decisions that are made regarding space as opposed to what happens for instance with environmental issues where NGOs would repeatedly demonstrate through spectacular actions so no spectacular actions is possible in space and this raises a question which is should the policy makers take advantage of that to ignore what civil society might think or want for space or does it give them additional responsibilities to make sure that that the civil society is properly consulted so this is just a question I will not try to answer it today within the time slots that I have second gap is the lack of common and universal understanding of the highest or the highest level requirements or documents framing the operations in outer space it is true that's the all the high level documents like the outer space treaty come along with a great deal of interpretation this is the case for any kind of legal document or legal piece of law and of course outer space doesn't make exception there and the devil is in the details and actually when a few things come to the real case implementation we discover that's where we are faced with unexpected issues in the normal life in other areas this is the gap which is filled in by the so called jurisprudence but for to have in order to have a jurisprudence what we need is to have an authority and an authority we don't have in space because actually this this is the principle in itself has not been agreed and we won't have because I do not expect that in the in the predictable future there might be an international agreement of any kind of authority to make decisions regarding how what should be done or not in space so we will have to live with this interpretation issue for a while and I will come to that later the third gap that I would like to mention is the absence of verification mechanism regarding the way the LTS guidelines are implemented of course we don't have a police in space we will never have and it is true that this this is not something which is could be envisaged because actually we have no binding agreements and the the LTS are not binding agreements but at least the member states that have approved them in particular should be I would say able to commit on what they are ready or what they believe they are able to do in terms of behavior in space and then this should be monitored to assess the the reality of the commitments that are that are made and even though they are made on a voluntary basis now regarding the priorities maybe I will go a bit a bit quicker and the first one for me would be to set up a road framework for the establishment of technical standards regarding the implementation of the the LTS guidelines and we need standards to define how these guidelines should implement these guidelines have been discussed at political at legal level this is now time for engineers to deliver their understanding and and the way we I would say on an international basis should consider implementing them in the in the various programs and activities that were in space second would be the creation of an interpretation working group involving civil society to favor a joint reading of the reference document so as I said we have we have to live with this issue of understanding and reading of the of the treaties and and at the moment what we see is trend an emerging and somewhat worrying trend towards formal formally translating into national law they some individual interpretation interpretation of the treaties these all started with the United States with a space act very fine work that has been done by the by the US then followed they have been followed by Luxembourg which came up with their interpretation of the of the treaty slightly different now we have the UAE and and the question is what is the way forward should each and every country around the planet come up with its own interpretation and and then how will we be able to collaborate in space if we have different understandings on what are the rights and obligations of the various countries and of their various private companies the third priority for me would be to ensure a link of outer space affairs with the management of environment environmental issues on the international stage environment is increasingly a major concerns of the civil society in space is the space environment in any way different I don't think so and what is at stake is actually the state in which we will pass on outer space to the future generation and this is not a short-term issue and this is a universal concern and I think that that both environment environmental issues in outer space and environmental issues on earth should be dealt with in a comparable manner thank you very much great those are excellent thank you very much for that Jean-Jacques Goyu over to you please can you hear me yes thank you so much for the dark eye image I mean the introduction and I thank the invitation from the secure world foundation it is my great pleasure to be here and almost as well to share my personal views with all of you so followed just to follow the instruction I would like to start with the top three gaps so the challenges for implementation of LTS guidelines could be observed from both sides of the space actors and the guidelines per se in general the top three capacity gaps could be perceived from three kinds of relations or contradictions namely the first ideality and reality the second locality and systematicness and third feasibility and the perspectiveness so as to the first one ideality and reality the guidelines generally reflect common understandings about the challenges to preserve LTS of outer space activities however state may hold different positions in respect of the solutions due to their different levels of development and management as one of the negotiators I understand that some guidelines are adopted with great compromise and some of them are even beyond any state's practice or capabilities they are having such as the inquiry mechanism about and registers this object in the guideline A5 requirements of providing contact information in B1 consultation mechanism about conjunction assessment in B4 and requirements about pre-launched conjunction assessment in B5 so such kind of guidelines might be ideal tools to preserve LTS but obviously their implementation will face some challenges in reality due to liking of general practice the second one locality and systematicness to preserve the LTS is a systematic project no matter from national or international perspective although the existing guidelines have contained the elements for space governance as much as practical it's still in question that whether it's already covers all the necessary ones first and only requirement about trackability is highlighted in B8 regarding the design and space object however in respect of the due management of small satellites there are increasing recognitions about the maneuverability requirements of them to space actors it might be different to implement a guideline solely in locality or to do so systematically since the coasts or to be carried or merits to be taken might be different corresponding and last one is feasibility and prospectiveness although the LTS working group already tried its best to seek for the greatest extent of common understandings and compromise about the challenges to the LTS it's still not realistic to conclude every challenge we are facing and it's really difficult to reach consensus on draft guidelines regarding the cutting edge issues first things space mining of the servicing planetary defense cyber security other space activities etc though I would like to talk about the priorities three groups of keywords could be considered in a matter of filling the gaps respectively are first inclusive and stepwise approach second continuous development answer new identification um so the levels firstly inclusive and stepwise approach the level of or is tend to implementations of a space actor should be considered by the characteristic of the specific guideline and the factual stage of the development of space technology or management of each state generally speaking the guideline could be divided into three levels first lies certainties to implement to the majority for the majority second uncertain to implement for some why in certain period and third more uncertainties to implement for the majority so in the LTS documents the guidelines are divided into a b c d four groups most of the guidelines of group a policy and regulatory framework for space activities group c international cooperation capacity building and the revenues and group d scientific and technical research and development so most of these guidelines might have less uncertainties to implement for the majority as to group b safety of space operations for the states who already have relevant practices or establish the relevant procedures or standards is not hard to implement them however for the states who are still on the way to improve national regulatory framework it would take some time for a sound implementation as to some new recommendations or requirements in respect of registration construction assessment small satellite measurement and controlled reentry essential there's still many uncertainties for the implementation from another perspective it might be concluded that the level of the implementation of a guideline is proportional to the level of difficulties to achieve consensus on it during the negotiations therefore inclusive and stepwise approach should be adopted then it could be in line with the nature of the guidelines which are non-newly binding and should be implemented on a voluntary basis and the second continuous development on my hand that the existing 21 guidelines should be continuously developed together with the development of practice and new ease taking account of the the need of the systematic governance on the other hand the asset of issue need to be further discussed there are still some guidelines and not deeply discussed due to the time limitations or the controversies so the last one is about new identification so from a forward-looking perspective there are still some issues or topics need to be identified such as space mining of servicing and planetary defense as mentioned before the discussion of the might bring certain changes or amendments of the existing guidelines the systematicness and the prospectiveness are always interacted with each other without such new identifications the implementations of listing guidelines would face uncertainties as well just stop here thank you great thank you very much for that perspective Goyu and then to find to finish up the civil space perspective i'm going to turn over to Danielle thank you so much it's my honor to join today and to give a perspective from academia focusing on both the gaps and the opportunities pursue a global capacity for space sustainability i'll just give some initial credit to highlight that i've worked closely in collaboration with Professor Morabudah UT Austin and the ESA space debris office so much of what i'll share are things i've also learned to collaborate with them on the space sustainability rating and also just want to give a stronger note to the academic research done in communities and shared through the international academy of astronautics the AMOS community that gathers usually annually just to highlight that there's a lot of building from an academic community that brings together these ideas that i want to reference today i also want to just briefly comment i appreciated Jean-Jacques comment on the uniformity of sustainability issues across earth as well as space in fact in the coming a AA ascend event in November collaborating with Crystal Wilson here at secure world will be presenting a panel discussion on sustainability on earth and space and i really echo your comments i'd like to highlight my top three gaps focusing on what it looks like in the long term to truly work toward space sustainability in the framework of these 21 guidelines and i'll speak with a kind of an idealized sense of what we can do in the long term and short steps we can make in the meantime for me the gaps include first understanding better what is actually in space and being able to identify detect and track objects including those that are registered and operated currently as well as objects that are not identified or not known of a particular owner the second idea is to say we want to develop incentives a key gap is to make sure that operators and manufacturers are incentivized to do everything in their power so that their particular missions are not increasing both space debris or collision risk and a third area is to say in the long term i believe that the long-term manifestation of really achieving the guidelines moves us toward eventually a voluntary global space drug management system that echoes what what we see in our global volunteer activities for international civil aviation so we can think about how that becomes a template but especially to ask now what steps can we take to understand the concerns of emerging space nations toward moving toward having long-term global space drug management so i'll share some examples of initiatives that are happening in these three areas starting with the idea with the need to improve international space situational awareness to understand what's in space now built to detect identify and track this is an area of active academic research and i mentioned the ongoing research communities hosted by a conference such as amos and the communities hosted by the international academy of astronautics that have vibrant discussion it's great to see doctoral students young professionals and seasoned professionals coming together to discuss these challenges we're seeing a lot of interesting new academic trends for example asking how can we use machine learning and artificial intelligence to better understand the large complex data sets that are currently available there's also questions on what can be improved with the actual operation and physical design of satellites make them easier to track detect and identify and there's further questions about what will be coming up as we see more activity with commercial organizations providing ssa information so there's a great opportunity for a blend between academic research and coordination closely with governments and commercial teams to actually push forward with technical breakthroughs make it more effective to understand what's in space because that's going to be a key part of making sure that people are exchanging in a transparent way information and of course this is a combination of advancing the state of the art while also creating opportunities for data sharing that are welcomed across different national boundaries part of the idea here is also to ask what are the technical challenges with improving the ability to understand where objects are in many ways we've made great progress and there's of course a lot of knowledge about many objects but we have the objects that are well reported and are well documented in globally shared data networks but there's also many objects where we need further research both to understand best how to detect them make sure we know that we're seeing them in our global networks of sensors to identify whether there are objects we've seen before or whether they're new ones and then to be able to track them over time another topic I want to discuss then is the idea of creating incentives for operators and manufacturers to do all they can to reduce space to bring and here I want to highlight the work of our collaborative team led initially by the world economic forums global future council on space technologies several years ago they proposed a creation of a space sustainability rating a system that would propose a voluntary set of guidelines that operators could voluntarily succumb to and therefore be able to receive a score showing their ability to reduce space debris and collision avoidance as they operate I'm part of the team along with University of Texas at Austin the rice space and technology team east is based re-office and the world economic forum we've formed a consortium that is designing this initial definition of the space sustainability rating the work is ongoing we'll be able to give updates and conferences later this year and we have the idea to focus on actions that can are very concrete that can be taken by operators they're in the area of how operators share data about their mission how they actively work for collision avoidance how they apply internationally adopted standards that are published and known throughout the community how they make an effort to be more detectable easier to identify and easier to track as a mission we also ask what is the impact of these missions especially large constellations on the space environment meaning if a new mission is added how does it create risk for other nearby missions ultimately this will be a publicly shared document that everyone can reference but it'll also be a system that actually gives a published scores that are taken on a voluntary basis by operators who choose to be evaluated for how much they get involved and this creates opportunities for industry especially those operating the satellites but also governments can play a role to foster this use of this tool the final comment I want to highlight is the future movements toward a voluntary global spatial management system I just highlight that some of the research my team has done is asking what are the concerns of emerging space nations I want to highlight the master's thesis work of Miles Liston and my team particularly interviewed people from emerging space nations asking what concerns they have with regard to designing a global STM system and they had the desire to be deeply involved with the process to see it hosted in a very broad venue such as the United Nations where everyone can play a role that can sense this driven discussion and to move toward having a combination of both binding and non-binding rules that could help to establish a practice in the future they also talked about the importance of including a role for industry as part of this long-term planning we're publishing this information and make it available but we see there's already plenty of knowledge around what is interesting for emerging space nations and preparing this in the future thank you great thank you much Daniel thank you much to all four of my panelists that was an excellent introduction to both the LTS guidelines and the scope of the challenge we have in front of us as all the sectors try and deal with this I'm now going to turn to my colleague Victoria Samson who's going to introduce her panel with an industry perspective hello everyone thank you for being here um as brand said my name is Victoria Samson I'm the Washington office director of the secure bro foundation I'm really excited about our panel given the industry perspective because oftentimes when we have these discussions of multi-lateral fora and the recommendations or guidelines they come up with it is rare to actually say okay hopper being in the non-nation state perspective and with space becoming so increasingly commercial it's extremely important to see how we can get all stakeholders involved in that absolutely involves industry perspectives so I'm going to introduce my panelists really quickly uh first up is Daniel Turgi who is a director of AGI center for space standards and innovation program manager of the space data center analyst and space policy expert for AGI's commercial space operation center technical author founder and administrator of the space safety coalition and the author of numerous international space standards and best practices next we'll be going to tress to bounce who is a senior director of the policy at the satellite industry association the u.s. space trade association representing over 50 satellite operators manufacturers round equipment suppliers and launch companies in this position tress manages s.i.a working groups on regulatory legislative defense space safety cyber security remote sensing and expert control related issues then we'll be moving on to Artie Halla who has been secretary general of the so has since 2004 she's a member of the world economic forums global future council on space technology where she also contributes to the space sustainability rating being elaborated together on with mit she's also a member of the broad economics forums global 5g coalition network an essential digital infrastructure and services network and then finally we'll be ending with charity we didn't who is the vice president global space policy for astroscale u.s. where she coordinates and synchronizes astroscales global policy efforts towards space flight safety and the long-term sustainability of space via multiple on-orbit services such as active degree removal end-of-life services institutes space traditional awareness and satellite life extension so with that i'm gonna go right to my first panelist dan you're up that's good morning thank you for the invite to participate this is an honor and an important topic to us all if we could start the video please i want to say it is an exciting time right now with the much discussed large constellations now well underway for some of them we've recently updated our statistics and this associated video we originally posted this in january of 2020 depicting all the spacecraft that have been applied for through the FCC and or itu and in the space of a few years between planet and SpaceX and one web we have grown to operate through large constellations a quarter or 751 of today's 3000 satellite active satellite population in this new version of the video there's over a hundred thousand spacecraft applied for through 2029 to potentially be flown by 68 large constellation operators four of those large constellation operators comprise over 90 percent of all large constellation applications and between the us and the uk that those account for 95 percent of all large constellation spacecraft applied for but everyone wonders what portion of all these applications is actually real and will actually lead to operational spacecraft and then given that that portion what will that portion mean for space situation awareness or ssa space traffic coordination management or stcm and collision risk there's no doubt that large constellations will have and in fact already have had dramatic impact on ssa and stm by our estimates within 10 years we can expect up to 200 2.5 million close calls per year in the most congested orbital regimes leading to over 40 collisions annually if those threats are not effectively managed and mitigated having participated in designing developing and operating uh flight safety systems for many years now i can attest to the human tendency to be proud of accomplishing the rollout of a space safety system without paying enough attention to whether it provides on an ongoing basis comprehensive accurate and timely answers this points to the need for automated collision avoidance systems but in like manner it can be easy to assemble an autonomous avoidance system without ensuring that it is effective in an operational context in order to be effective we need to think about the especially big gaps we have in our current processes space safety is comprised of a long chain of components and a chain is no stronger than its weakest link besides the continuing delay in the selection of a lead agency for space traffic management in the u.s the biggest gaps i see are that we have still today far too many stove pipe ssa and spacecraft operation systems where the global aggregate set of space data is either not shared not used or not used effectively again there's that word effectively in part this stems from organizations vocalizing that they need to trust but verify but instead of verifying we often observe a not verified therefore not trusted mentality we continue to see ssa products and services that are unnecessarily degraded by simplifications faulty assumptions poor service level availability a lack of quality control and algorithms that are not high performers while the commercial ssa and now analytical services community has made significant progress these have yet to be adopted by governments in a substantive way and lastly in terms of gaps we have largely been treading water with the free to operator conjunction assessment services which tend to be lower in availability non-transparent and not effectively incorporating spacecraft operator data including maneuver plans directly into the orbit determination and forward prediction process advanced analytics data fusion quality control and high availability will be central to realizing our our long-term sustainability goals so based on these gaps here are my top priorities for achieving long-term sustainability first we need to ensure that we take a comprehensive complementary holistic approach to realizing LTS it's not just about treaties guidelines and standards it's all of those plus commercial best practice with aspirational goals of not only meeting but exceeding minimum consensus requirements second there's a plethora of opportunities to bring advanced algorithms and analytics to bear to the ssa and stcm problem we need to bring these to the arenas without delay as in now if you haven't seen the washington post article from today by chris davin port i recommend you read it we need to get past our current us stm logjam and quickly transition advanced capabilities and analytics into operations third more effort needs to be devoted to building and implementing the research innovation and operations trl advancement path to take good ideas apply them to real-world situations and data and work to mature them into operationally relevant technology readiness levels fourth space safety can be dramatically improved if we open up the floodgates on space data in a crowdsourcing approach alleviating some of today's stovepipe ssa processes we can promote and facilitate space data exchange via validated and operationalized data lake constructs such as a space data association self-formed by commercial industry in 2009 the sda provides flight safety services to 30 operators in all orbital regimes in a crowdsourcing approach of authoritative operator data on july 25th of this year we celebrated the sda's 10th anniversary of flight safety services the sda pioneered numerous stcm breakthroughs that many people today are only now realizing the importance of the sda serves as a leading space data portal to other entities such as the u.s. government and finally we also need to capture promote and implement aspirational best practices through commercial self-formed entities such as a space safety coalition that we formed last year the ssc is an industry-formed entity that endorses and strives to implement not only international treaties guidelines and standards including the long-term sustainability guidelines but additionally to aspire to even more stringent levels of compliance and safety with four new ssc and doorsees including two recently from asia our participating set of space entities has quickly grown to 44 the ssc initiative continues to resonate well across the space community in summary commercial space is and will remain the hotbed of space activity this activity represents a multi trillion dollar space economy that addresses countless human needs and activities the time to address the many gaps in our lts strategies is now especially in view of our ever increasing use of space thank you thank you dan wonderful next we have trice jones trice thank you victoria and thanks so much for recognizing the importance of including industry in this dialogue i know at the international level there's often been some hostility for industry participating in these dialogues as dan pointed out you know the commercial industry is becoming a bigger and bigger after on orbit over 50 percent of the satellites after satellites on orbit right now our commercial and soon we'll have these large leo constellations that overwhelm space with commercial satellites we've been very engaged as sia um we're us focused but we do have members that are international we have all the major leo operators that dan showed in this simulation so i think it's really important for us to continue to engage in these dialogues so we've worked both at the us level and international level on implementation of the lts guidelines making sure they're known by our members and then just really trying to engage other operators in space sustainability best practices last fall we released space safety principles which i will share in the chat once i'm done talking but industry has the power to move faster than government and encourage other actors to use best practices in space sustainability and for dialogue surrounding these big issues which is something that we've really been dedicated to working on one major issue for us that dan already touched upon a lot is the gap in transparency and ssa data and you know what the errors in that data are everything is stovepipe as dan mentioned um in our space safety principles we encourage actors to practice transparency through timely communication and sharing of ssa information like health and status information orbital elements maneuvers spacecraft characteristics radio frequency information and then also support participation and development of international standards that that meet current and projected future data exchange so we're working on that right now but in order to fill this gap one thing that we think is really important right now and very timely is creating a civil agency within the us to work on this ssa data sharing capabilities um i know we haven't quite figured out which agency that will be in the us yet um the department of commerce has done a lot of work on this as has the fAA but really we want to encourage particularly congress to act and fund an agency to do this ssa data sharing because without the data sharing it's hard to work on space traffic management when you don't know what the errors are especially once you get a lot more satellites on orbit and have many more close calls per year you need better data to really be able to maneuver um another big thing that's an issue for us is a lack of international guidance on debris generation um you know there's the 25-year rule on deorbiting uh everyone sort of thinks that's too long but what's the actual solution to that something that we're still trying to figure out and i know the sec has been trying to think about as well through um its oral debris mitigation um notice of proposed rulemaking um how can we address that i think we really need to talk on the international scale about several things including ASAP testing um since those are big debris generating events um i think it was unexpected for a lot of people how long the debris from the indian ASAP test um stayed on orbit it um i know at least one of our operators had a very close call from the indian ASAP test even though they thought it would be orbit quickly um so hoping to participate in international dialogues on things like that but also need to talk about maneuverability um and i know the sec has also taken a large look at this but at what altitude should you have propulsion in systems um the sec's small sat guidelines has said 600 kilometers they sort of looked at a 400 kilometer range to um that has different implications for cube sat operators who may not be able to use propulsion a lot of them use differential drag so there's a lot of research being done on this and a lot of dialogue which i'm hoping will continue to figure out you know what altitudes which propulsive propulsive systems or other maneuverability systems such as differential drag um could be good solutions um and then another big issue is for us is just you know updating contact information and sharing information um on orbital elements at skyline b1 um i've heard multiple of our operators say they've gotten conjunction warnings and they try to reach out both to international governments or other international operators and they've found that there's no one available in their office at the time like it's a national holiday or a weekend and they literally just can't get a hold of an operator to you know coordinate um and deal with the conjunction warning um so this seems like it should be relatively straightforward but just working with international partners to ensure that operation centers are staffed 24 hours a day seven days a week with updated contact information and we also hope to work to educate new space actors about procedures with regard to conjunction warnings and we're not exempt from that either we've had operators that are newer uh have issues working with even international governments in the past and not everyone being on the same page so it's in more of an education issue um there I think those are my top gaps in corresponding priorities so thanks Victoria. Thank you so much Terese that was great all right next we have Artie. Thank you very much thanks for involving Issoa in this event um I would say on behalf of the commercial satellite operators that they certainly welcome the guidelines as a means to reinforce the need to preserve uh the space environment and encourage responsible behavior obviously commercial satellite operators are most concerned with minimizing risks in orbit that means getting there safely operating there safely ensuring a space a safe environment for reinvestment which includes disposing of satellites safely and from that perspective the operators are going to take a very a very practical view and focus on practical realities that help minimize the risks and protect their assets protect their users and ultimately their businesses um in that context I think we could ask various questions so should there be an obligation to bring down orbital stages should there be an obligation on shareholders to bring down satellites if the company gets into financial difficulties should there be an obligation to design satellites so as to have greater certainty that they can be de-orbited safely in case of a failure in space and should there be an obligation to share data to help better management of the space environment for example as part of the launch license obligation each one of those questions brings with it a cost but if that cost drives more responsible behavior in space then as long as it isn't disproportionate or excessive it is probably worth exploring the space data association is a great example of data sharing voluntary data sharing and I think that it's probably safe to say that it is today the only non-governmental real-time collaboration that exists for sharing data for improved ssa and safety of flight operations but given the ease with which actors can access space and the advent of mega constellations I think we should not deny the fact that the amount of data that needs to be shared is increasing by orders of magnitude it has to be managed by a secure and automated system and the more data shared the more accurate the warnings and the greater the chances of minimizing risk now with that in mind I think the gaps that I would say are a lack of harmonized data sharing across the globe by that I mean the quality and the timeliness of data you have different systems existing some of them providing set real-time data and others having data which might might be a weak old so obviously this affects the accuracy of the conjunction analysis and you also have suspicion and skepticism that prevents data sharing some states wonder why should they pay for a service at all when assessments are already published for free or why should they provide information at all and this suggests a lack of understanding of the importance and the benefits of sharing data from our perspective collision risk is probably the most urgent risk that needs to be addressed and we feel that the space data association really is an ideal in place vehicle with which we can address it we would suggest that states should consider adopting it as a voluntary transparency and confidence building measure and encourage or incentivize as many operators as possible to join it when I say incentivize you could think about license requirements for example I know that operators in the UK are asked when they apply for a license whether they will share data it's unclear whether they would actually secure their license if they were to say no that's all thank you wonderful thank you already okay and last we have charity we didn't charity hi thank you secure world for putting on a timely event an important one as as well and I want to send my congratulations to UN copious for the delivery of the 21 long term sustainability guidelines it was a global effort that took you know a decade to come to fruition but it also included some academic NGO industry inputs in the process while agreeing on these agreements is monumental what is now important is commitment to their implementation so this is where the private sector needs to play a significant role the plurality of active satellites today are privately owned and operated and tens of thousands of additional satellites are being planned even if 10 of them launch there will be a significant impact and change in the way we use earth orbit if we the global community can get this right we have opened the possibility for a number of increased benefits on earth greater connectivity better understanding of our planet and resource management keeping citizens secure and of course scientific discoveries that we will all benefit from i'll add that there is a clear economic incentive to ensure earth orbit is a safe operating environment as government and industry looks to expand the global space economy an lts objective is developing national and international practices and safety frameworks this is precisely why astroscale has put an emphasis on policy regulation standards and best practices has a significant area of effort as well as public engagement and education on the issue digging deeper several guidelines lend themselves to action right away in fact many in the private sector are already implementing some of the guidelines that improve communication and transparency for example providing updated contact information and sharing info on space objects and orbital events groups such as the space data association are designed for precisely this the improvement of accuracy of orbital data on space objects enhancing the practice and utility of sharing orbital information on space objects investments in industry are being made to support this guideline today and i'm always pleased to see public updates of significant significant events in orbit that help us all have situational awareness of what is happening sharing experiences and information exchange this is where industry groups excel the consertion for the execution of rendezvous and servicing conference has developed practices that call for sharing lessons learned for anomalies during rendezvous and proximity operations then there are those items that are under discussion today and require more effort and capacity than those i've already mentioned how to design and operate space objects to minimize debris events this means ensuring disposal in an expedited manner after the end of mission and having a backup plan to limit the creation of debris if a satellite fails in orbit additionally the space safety coalition which dan outlined has several practices along these lines including constellation architectures that use radial separation and automation in maintaining collision risk so i feel the private sector is well equipped and motivated to implement some of the guidelines today the question we've been given here is where are the gaps in capacity and what can we do together to fill those gaps to ensure a sustainable environment the first that comes to mind is domestic policy and legal frameworks for nations that are newer to space operations and have a growing presence it can be a lengthy process that requires many resources to put in place a legal and policy structure that can support domestic implementation of the guidelines ultimately nations need to make clear and this is not just for emerging actors who is in charge of space flight safety and sustainability for a nation and is that entity sufficiently resourced and empowered another priority is accessible accurate and timely space situational awareness the guidelines are underpinned by a key technology ssa in order for implementation to be effective this is not solely about guideline b4 which is performing conjunction analysis during all phases this is also about supervising activities equitable radio frequency spectrum use sharing space weather raising awareness and having more actionable ssa data the global community is not yet fully equipped for timely accurate and actionable ssa another gap information data idea sharing mechanisms should there be the perfect ssa architecture this still would not be enough if the data is not available for all who intend to implement the 21 guidelines how the community will get around the technical privacy security and proprietary barriers this is a difficult problem the one that's not impossible to solve so i see three things that are needed we need diplomatic and political will the creation of the guidelines were a decade old effort no doubt with many bumps along the way if is there good enough uh will and political priority as well as sense of urgency to commit to implementation will it be more talk than action norms of behavior we need to keep building and banking these behaviors that drive towards spaceflight safety so as we get actionable ssa more readily available there are expectations and certainty of what operators are doing and will do when operating their spacecraft and finally we need private operator input states therefore need to think more holistically but who is operating in the environment and their impacts more and more industry inputs will be necessary and industry needs to show leadership and sustainability by building into their plans and technology the necessary standards and best practices that go above and beyond regulatory minimums thank you thank you charity i'd like to thank all the panelists for this panel for just having some really thoughtful ideas about concerns and possibilities for implementing the lts guidelines from the industry perspective okay next i'd like to turn it over to my box the svf6 executive director peter martinez who will be monitoring the government panel thank you thank you victoria um so welcome everyone to the third panel of this webinar we've heard from experts in civil society and industry on ways that we can build capacity for lts guideline implementation and in this panel we will focus on what governments and igos can do to help build capacity for these the implementation of these guidelines and to discuss this issue today we have four very distinguished panelists who were deeply involved in the development of the lts guidelines and it's my pleasure to introduce them to you now our first speaker will be andre ripple a brazilian diplomat currently stationed in vienna and also the current chairman of un corpus andre was intimately involved in the negotiation of the lts guidelines initially as a member of the brazilian delegation to corpus and later in his capacity as chair of the committee he presided over the session where these guidelines were adopted our second speaker will be karen chahar who is the senior deputy legal advisor in the israeli ministry of foreign affairs she's currently one of the vice chairs of un corpus and has also been closely involved in the negotiation of the guidelines as well as the domestic implementation of these guidelines our third speaker is mr david turner he is the acting director of the office of space and advanced technology in the u.s state department where he manages a broad portfolio of bilateral and multilateral civil space activities including the development and implementation of national space policy and strategy and international affairs focused on the civil and commercial space sectors mr turner is is a member of the u.s delegation to un corpus and last but not least our fourth speaker is niklas headman chief of the committee policy and legal affairs section of the un office for outer space affairs in vienna niklas also serves as the committee secretary for un corpus and his office provided tremendous support to the working group on lts and for me personally as chair for which i acknowledge with great appreciation as you can see we have an extremely well-qualified of panelists so without further ado i will pass the floor over to andrei to begin with his intervention order the floor is yours thank you peter and thank you everyone i'm sorry i had to rush into this meeting because i was participating in another webinar you know that three o'clock in brazilian time so i'm sorry if i repeat a couple of things that have already been mentioned uh but i think you'll bear with me well um when a secure world foundation approached me and i would like first of all also to thank them for the invitation well they approached me to to discuss this they posed a couple of questions related to the implementation of lts guidelines and the gaps so i thought that it would be best really to focus on those questions we don't have too much time and then allow more time for questions and and some debate afterwards and then one of the questions relating to the effective implementation of lts guidelines i was asked to try to identify the top three capacity gaps that i can see from my perspective in government and also as a participant in these negotiations well uh one thing i can say is that these gaps affecting adoption and implementation of guidelines will vary obviously from country to country and this tends to be directly related to how developed a given country space program is for the sole reason that a country needs some sort of institutional framework in terms of procedures or regulations or monitoring or supervision to control its space activities so of course the full picture is quite complex and in some developing countries you will find a range of situations um and then you can really you know make a full assessment that will address all the different things that are out there but it's probably safe to say that most developing countries face very specific challenges that are common to them and then they would affect the implementation of lts guidelines procedures and principles i would say the first of them is that usually you'll find limited awareness of the whole concept of lts guidelines and the guidelines themselves but uh to some operators in space especially those countries that are starting now the the concept of sustainability is not a clear one so basic points such as what the guidelines are and what purpose they serve are not clear of course this will not be the case in countries that are member states of copas and that were actively engaged in the lts negotiations but i think that sometimes and i see this you know when i talk to delegates from countries that have a more developed or institutionalized system uh they tend to assume well you had this country participating in the discussions in vienna you had their delegates so they would assume and i think it's only logical to assume that their national authorities would be fully aware and acquainted with all the procedures and this is not the case this is not a case because sometimes negotiations are for example conducted by diplomats or by a very specific office in the government and that information doesn't really trickle down to to the whole system in their countries a second point is that there is uncertainty regarding the authority in charge of promoting implementation of lts guidelines in other words sometimes it is difficult to identify who the supervising or implemented authority should be and depending on local circumstances we may find instances of overlapping responsibilities and conflicts of authority and it may be the case that there is nobody in charge of addressing such conflicts and determining well the implementation of lts guidelines will be you know the responsibility of a specific body and a third point in terms of gaps would be the lack of qualified personnel and that is compounded sometimes by the technical and technological gaps that hinder implementation so even sometimes if countries are aware of the guidelines and their importance of the concept they don't have the human resources and the technological capability to implement them so i've heard examples of countries where you basically have for example one individual in charge of the whole task of implementing the lts guidelines and also trying to address how to incorporate them into the their domestic framework and this is absolutely you know a nightmare the second point that we are addressing today the top three things that we as governments can do to fill this capacity gaps and how can government help fill these gaps well it's almost like a million dollar question but i would say that the major point is the need for education and that would include i use the term in a very broad sense training opportunities so lts operators need to have someone to turn to when they need to fill their gaps in knowledge and this goes for improved international cooperation the overall lts effort has to be an international effort of course you have domestic implementation you have specific initiatives but the bottom line is that you need some sort of system that you will help uh lend a hand in a manner speaking to those countries that are just starting and they don't have the necessary uh they require resources to implement the guidelines so this first point is linked to the sharing of best practices and approaches and particularly those used by industry and governments so it's important that we do not take anything for granted and we cannot assume a specific level of competence so the sharing of best practices can do wonders to address that and this would also have the added benefit of fostering partnerships and thus improving the international environment for space cooperation which would assist us in many other ways and a third point or a third approach that we could use that would consist of setting up of some sort of collaborative forum or maybe we could draft a kind of how to guide for the guidelines and that could be used to introduce newcomers to the basic steps of the lts process and then how they can start adopting and implementing the guidelines and how they can transfer these lts concepts into domestic regulations so this will be my my key points uh because i believe really the effectiveness of these lts guidelines will is a reflection or is a result of our level of international cooperation and coordination so thank you thank you andrei for your very thoughtful comments i'd now like to pass the floor to our next speaker karen shahar hi do you hear me yes so hello everyone and thank you for the invitation to participate in the panel i will focus in the questions due to the time limit um so i'll start with the first capacity gap a which i would like to mention a would be the regulatory gap it was mentioned by previous speakers as well i think a charity within a mentioned it as well an absence of a space and national regulatory framework makes it very difficult to implement the lts guidelines there are quite few guidelines which require licensing in order to ensure their implementation many those who apply to the private sector moreover the lts guidelines include several norms of responsible behavior that need to be established nationally in order to be implemented more effectively another capacity gap in my view would be the way the private sector addresses new guidelines and regulations in general our experience shows that the private sector tends to address new regulations and guidelines as a burden rather than an opportunity the challenge is to engage the industries and the private sector in general and make them understand it is in their own interest to implement the guidelines although they are not legally binding it's in their own benefit and it's not intended to be a burden but to facilitate and promote space activity it is also it has also an economic value for them in this context it might be beneficial to take as an example the environmental legislation here on earth which was perceived similarly at the beginning it was not intuitive for the private sector back in the 80s and the 90s to change the course of business in order to become environmental today we all understand it's important for all including for business I should mention in this context that regulatory frameworks have of course a lot to do with it as well the third capacity gap I would mention is the awareness of policy and decision makers and Ray just mentioned that there is a limited awareness among national authorities I would focus in how to get the policy and the she and decision makers attention and make them prioritize the implementation of the LTS guidelines over the other many important issues they have under plate the implementation may require may require changes of policy some innovative decisions not to mention budgets without bringing the policy makers on board it may be extremely difficult to implement the guidelines now as to the capacity building for filling the capacity gaps the first my my first a capacity building point would be drawing a national to-do list I believe that the first the first step for an effective implementation of the LTS guidelines should be drawing a national to-do list specifically tailored for the capabilities and needs of a state such a list should be drafted as a result of a process of consultations among all relevant stakeholders including governmental agencies private sector civil society and academia all of them can assist and enrich the dialogue on implementation of the guidelines this broad consultation is also aimed at avoiding unintended consequences of regulation that might be more restrictive than necessary secondly another important element in filling the gaps are comprehensive and a comprehensive outreach and legislation as previously mentioned legislation would be one of the major capacity building blocks for a state that wants to implement the LTS guidelines in Israel we have recently initiated a process aimed at enacting a space law the future space law would include a regulatory system as well as other elements which may facilitate the implementation of the guidelines although the process is expected to take time our legislation procedures tend to take years it raises questions in interesting and interesting ideas regarding an effective implementation of the guidelines and it provokes thinking the legislation process will be proceeded by a comprehensive outreach to the private public and governmental stakeholders some of which were not involved in the elaboration of the guidelines in copies we attach great importance to an early outreach in order to raise awareness and facilitate an effective discussion on the legal instrument and last but not least is the international cooperation international cooperation between states is a key factor for dissemination of good practices in light of the non-legally binding nature of the guidelines it is for the implementation for the interpretation of states how to implement them international cooperation may contribute to create a common understanding as to the best practices for implementation of the guidelines and may promote a coordinated concept among states as to the appropriate regulation and policy in this regard i would like to mention in this context that we had a very good experience with the cooperation with the US in all stages of the bearish mission including a discussion on implementation of the LTS guidelines as part of the preparations although everything was performed according to the procedures there still was the issue of the tardigrade which highlighted the cross-cutting need to improve the chain of custody i believe that this kind of bottom-up approach might end in strengthening the global implementation of the guidelines thank you thank you Karen for your very thoughtful remarks i would not like to pass floor over to David Turner David as far as yours thank you very much good morning good afternoon and good evening to all let me start by saying that i as some of you know was not on the ground for much of the discussion of the LTS guidelines in Vienna but i was in the background here in Washington DC throughout the 10-plus year process and i was lucky enough to be there at the end and get my name my signature on the front page of the guidelines which we saw at the beginning so let me start by addressing the question about the top three capacity gaps in effective implementation of the guidelines i would like to call them challenges and not gaps and start with the challenge of practical implementation even as a space established space actor the US continues to find areas where implementation requires a lot of discussion and input i'm going to mention two practical examples or or really one practical example related to guideline a three supervised national space activities Karen shahar already mentioned the the tardigrades and so i won't go into that again but that was one of my examples and despite the fact that we had tremendous cooperation among our two countries on the proper way to authorize and supervise that that mission we we still had the issue of the tardigrades the second one i'll mention is an effort underway now in the executive branch led by the US Department of Commerce to work on an effective light touch authorization and supervision regime for non-traditional space activities this is as a result of a recommendation from the august 2019 national space council meeting i won't go into detail on this effort it's still a pre-decisional effort within the US government and it's not directly the responsibility of my department but we are very supportive strongly supportive of the goals to ensure that the united states remains the nation of choice for commercial space businesses and activities and this effort is intended to allow US commercial space regulation to move at the speed of innovation industry speed of innovation not not the speed of government but at the same time represent US leadership in ensuring space sustainability and responsible behavior so this implementation effort is a challenge and one that we are taking very seriously the second challenge is ensuring that implementation takes place with input from all relevant stakeholders the LTS guidelines are by intent broad in general and as David Kendall mentioned very complicated requiring flexibility for their implementation at the same time they are also cross-cutting in nature and they require a true whole-of-the-nation approach that involves governmental and private sector actors as nation states look to implement the guidelines at the national level it will be important to ensure there are in there is input from industry government and I mean all areas of government in this case policymakers lawyers scientists and technologists as well as the academic community this may actually be an area where newer space-faring nations who don't have a legacy of bureaucratic stovepipes um Daniel Troghi mentioned technical stovepipes but clearly we also have bureaucratic stovepipes but but developing nations may have an advantage because they do not yet have the stovepipes the third challenge which I also consider to be an opportunity is technology advancement and development implementing the guidelines requires an understanding that technology continues to develop therefore we must take approaches to implementation that do not unnecessarily create barriers to innovation for example and I believe that Dr. Wang mentioned this guideline already guideline v8 design and operation operation of space objects industry in the united states and many other nations continues to play a leading role in defining practices for operating large constellations of small satellites um and Teresa Teresa Jones mentioned several of the technical concepts that are under consideration within u.s. industry but at what point do the best industry practices become the technical and operational standards for implementation of this guideline how do we ensure that we don't prematurely lock into an approach that is too prescriptive or company specific risking the unintended consequence of unnecessarily cycling innovation and impeding market access for others on a related note uh how does government incentivize industry to continue playing a leading role in developing and sharing best practices for the responsible use of space with the broader space sharing community so now turning to the second question we were asked and perhaps to answer some of the questions that i just raised myself what are the top three government things that government can do to fill these capacity gaps or challenges um first we can ensure a domestic supervisory regulatory framework which accounts for current and future space activities a framework that is transparent predictable and takes into account the long-term sustainability of outer space as well as other international obligations the framework should be informed by rigorous cost-benefit analysis and should be flexible enough to allow for new and innovative space activities and potential adjustments as technology does evolve a second industry author to voluntarily takes on increased upfront investment and efforts to ensure their space activities from manufacturing on to on overt operations are done responsibly and safely this of course is in their interest to do so since they are in the business of selling goods and services uh in addition to being recognized in domestic regulatory cost-benefit analysis governments can continue to provide industry with opportunities to share their experiences gained from these efforts these upfront efforts within the broader space enterprise that would include non-governmental organizations and academia as well as national space programs and space agencies some examples include nation state driven fora such as the un committee on the peaceful uses of outer space and the un office father space affairs sponsored at specialized capacity building workshops but opportunities also exist in NGO sponsored events just like this seminar that we're participating in today finally space-faring nations can continue to model responsible behavior in their own space programs and activities through national implementation of the LTS guidelines as well as the broader principles inherent in the outer space treating international legal regime for all outer space activities for the US one example is the Artemis Accords which contain principles based on this existing regime that we believe represent a shared vision for exploring the moon Mars and beyond in a safe and responsible manner so let me stop there and leave time for questions and thank you very much thank you David for your very well considered remarks very stimulating I'd now like to pass the floor over to the last speaker in this panel Nicholas Hedman from UNUSA Nicholas the floor is yours thank you Peter I'm enlightened to be part of this important panel discussion and webinar and there is a lot of issues that obviously have been already addressed here the nature of the guidelines being a consensus product of COOPUS as we know and that is a reason why it took all those years it's a matter of governance as we already have established and there is a link to transparency and confidence measures and obviously it is not at all clear how to implement the guidelines so I have a few points that I would like to list here and some of those aspects have already been addressed there is a fundamental challenge challenge in the nature of a guidelines because they are the guidelines is a policy instrument it's a policy instrument that is targeting governmental and intergovernmental actors and that is very important to keep in mind also in the preamble to the guidelines this is obviously already put there the broad scope of the guidelines and it's already listed policy regulatory operational safety science technical intergovernmental continuation and capacity building aspects and there of course there we already see the complex nature of the guidelines therefore there is a need to really determine capacity building needs and capacity building efforts to meet those challenges now the guidelines address concerns of the broader space community as have already been been addressed here in this panel both governmental and non-governmental including academia civil society and per definition industry and private sector and therefore it is a need to be approached in a differentiated and targeted manner and that is very important so there is really a lot of work that has to be be made in order to targeting capacity building now from an intergovernmental perspective it is important also to establish I believe a structured exchange of information structured and organized a change of information on the implementation of those existing 21 guidelines but also to look into what all what other areas is needed to be included in the overall concept of the long-term sustainability of outer space activities it is important to note here that the complexity of the guidelines really meets the concerns of regulatory and operational requirements for the respective actors and that is very important to keep in mind so governments really have to be focused in the way that they implement the guidelines and look into how they would then obviously meet the requirements of their subjects under the jurisdiction also from an intergovernmental perspective it's important to establish I believe a mechanism within COOPUS scientific and technical subcommittee for organized sharing of information on space objects and events and this is one of the main issues of the guidelines which means that we would need to address information needs of spacefaring nations and equally capacity needs of emerging space nations because the safety of space operations worldwide of all actors and all states are concerned so the COOPUS STSC is the prime body at the global intergovernmental level for a structured information sharing under the guidelines and for the further development on the long-term sustainability of outer space activities and that is important to to put in this context now the office for outer space affairs as a UN entity and obviously also serving as a secretariat of the intergovernmental body COOPUS and its two subcommittees is I would say could serve as an interface in this structured and organized information sharing and assist in the intergovernmental process also USA, UNUSA, office for outer space affairs has a long tradition in conducting capacity building activities covering scientific, technical, legal and policy dimension so it is really capturing the whole area of space activities and that is important to note in this regard with a very strong emphasis and I think also that under Ripple alluded to this the emphasis on the needs of developing countries in emerging space nations because what we have here what we see here is not only addressing the spacefaring nations but also emerging space nations so with a structured and organized way forward at the intergovernmental level meaning through COOPUS this process will in a way help outlining a embryo or the fabrics of the future space traffic management regime at the global level whether a governance regime or not we don't know how STM will look like in the future but what is clearly here demonstrated is that by following an approach where we enhance capacity building in awareness increase dialogue between governance and private sector actors and also academia and civil society organized reporting on the implementation of the LTS guidelines the existing guidelines and further development in this area as well as an structured information exchange of space objects and events in order to foster the safety of space operations we will see the fabrics of STM and then of course there is the debate whether it should be a top-down or bottom-up approach in the development of a future STM regime but that is the second stage so whatever we do we will see the building blocks emerging for STM now in any capacity building efforts and in any dialogue among actors governmental and non-governmental it is important fundamental important to note that the guidelines are a reverence to all states regardless of the level of their current space activities and so it's a worldwide concern here and capacity building needs have to be identified for targeting those needs the capacity building efforts to meet those concerns so this is particularly notable against the strong policy nature of the guidelines when we look at the guidelines we see immediately how complex they are because it is a policy instrument it's a political policy instrument and there is a very close connection between the guidelines and the implementation of the obligations and rights under the legal regime law of the space and here I specifically address the treaties the principles and the space debris mitigation guidelines etc now finally I would like also to make a comment here that of course the LTS guidelines they address certain aspects of space activities and the dominating factor here is the safety of space operations as we already know now when we look into the future of governance of space activities in the broader perspective I believe that we have to be very clear and more concrete in the way that we develop governance regimes so we have to deal with planetary activities with concerns the moon and other celestial bodies that is one aspect then we have to look into how we foster our future long term sustainability of a space environment meaning the orbits and that is where LTS really comes into play and leading into a space traffic management regime eventually and lastly how we really build up also a governance regime for satisfying the needs of planet earth meaning how to use space assets in the future for the benefit of the of the earth and there we have a lot of other issues of course and of course we have threats from outer space that are also included in that aspect such as planetary defense but it all boils down to creating an order I wouldn't say a little order but an order of space activities at the global level where we need to foster interests of different space actors so it's past the time where we could only look into governmental aspects of space activities we now really need to also look into what are the needs of private sector industry but also civil society intergovernmental organizations etc but this requires a different approach to those various governance regimes so I would say environments that we have before us for the increasing space activities in the future so I think I will leave it at that it's really a matter of governance but it has to be structured and it has to be differentiated because we are of course looking a lot on on on planetary activities governance commercial science interests in in planetary activities space resources whatever that is one thing long-term sustainability as we see through the guidelines is really concentrating on the safety of space operations mainly orbital activities and we have to be very clear in that and we have to develop a focused approach through corpus and predominantly it's scientific and technical subcommittee just to finalize here my final word is that obviously as we all know the working group chaired by Hugh Peter has concluded this work the guidelines were adopted last year 2019 and they are the guidelines of the committee on the peaceful uses of outer space and that is important it's corpus that is the predominant actor involved in the further development and implementation of long-term sustainability and and it's important to keep this in mind and we now have established a new working group under the scientific and technical subcommittee and we in the this scientific and technical subcommittee we are now developing the structure of this working group which will first be in electing its bureau and then developing a work plan but I think that what we have really gathered in this panel would be in these are important factors and important views that are helpful in the further work on the long-term sustainability at the global level intergovernmentally because I'm only addressing intergovernment perspective and I think we have really challenging years ahead of us so thank you so much. Thank you Nicholas for very stimulating thoughts on the implementation questions at the intergovernmental level that brings us to the end of this panel so I would now like to transition over to the Q&A where we will in the remaining 10 minutes or so attempt to get through the as many of the questions as possible that our viewers have been opposing during this event and thank you for those of you who have voted up questions it keeps the list manageable and it gives us a good indication of which ones are of particular interest to this audience so let me work down from the top of the list we had a question that was posed by Jessica West on what is the status of national reporting of the implementation of the LTS guidelines and is there an effort to formalize this process I think this is most appropriately addressed to the panel of governmental and an IGO speakers so perhaps if I could quickly ask Andre, Karen and Dave to respond to it succinctly and then perhaps Nicholas as well from the UNRUSA perspective so Andre any any thoughts on this particular question? Just a second let me unmute this yes okay hi so thanks for the question well Peter I think we'll see varying degrees let's say in terms of national reporting yeah countries like Brazil are still in a very early stage you know deciding how to implement so we haven't really moved into the the stage where we'll start reporting how these processes is happening but I think there is this is something that is gaining momentum and I think that's something that's going to happen very very soon right now in terms of an effort to formalize the process Jessica asked about that well this in Brazil for example and that's a country can speak about this will go hand in hand with the discussions on a national space law this is part of the whole concept and my understanding is that this is a very advanced process so indeed it will be a formal process once the guidelines are implemented rather adopted internally or domestically that is a formal process so this is the path that Brazil has been following I can't really speak for other countries unfortunately thank you Karen anything you would like to add from your side yes thank you well I think countries have to have the chance first to understand how do they implement nationally the guidelines before going internationally and formalizing a process I think every country has different needs and capabilities in that context and it's very important that countries first understand where they stand and then formalize an international process for that and as I mentioned in my intervention earlier I really believe in the in the bottom up approach I think it should start from the practice and then and then going formalizing it internationally thank you thank you Dave anything you would like to add from from your side thank you just very quickly to say that the United States does intend to report on our implementation through the appropriate mechanisms under copious we've already done so we reach out to our industry and other space actors to bring them into this process and we are happy to talk in other venues as well about implementing the guidelines the implementation and reporting on implementation is very very important to us so thank you thank you and then Nicholas from from the UN whose side the part of the question was whether there are any efforts to formalize this process are you aware of of any kind of mechanisms currently under discussion to formalize or or perhaps structure the reporting on guideline implementation other than perhaps statements at the STSC well we already have a reporting in place I mean ad hoc please so a few countries are already reporting and David Turner said that already that United States has reported so yes we do have reporting but my point is here that the challenge would be to have an organized and structured reporting so on as we see it today it's a voluntary reporting in one way or the other on how states are implementing the existing guidelines but more is required if we really are going to achieve this for the benefit of all space nations emerging space nations and and also the broader space community so this is the challenge that probably has to be be addressed by this new working group and because we're reporting so through reports documentation parliamentary documentation and through statements but that is not enough we need structure and organized reporting here and what Karen already addressed earlier here is that first there is a need to understand how to how to report and how to implement you know because there is really a lot of challenge here due to the nature of the guidelines being a policy instrument and then only after you can you really have an understanding then you can do the adequate reporting and this is where where really capacity building and awareness increasing comes into the picture and this is something that that we really need to work on together member states of Coupos and together with the office for outer space affairs as be serving as the secretariat of Coupos so obviously we have a role there but we also probably need other actors into governmental and non-governmental organizations in this regard but it has to be really clearly clearly outlined here the predominant nature of the guidelines are addressing actions by governments and inter-governmental organizations so states and inter-governmental organizations are the the receiving ends of the guidelines so they really have the burden of the of the taking those guidelines back home and implement them and then of course obviously take into it into it take into account the interest of actors under this jurisdiction so this is very important to keep in mind thank you thank you Nicholas the the second question that seemed to have a lot of interest and I think it is particularly relevant to the topic of this webinar has to do with capacity building and the question was what what is a secure world foundation doing in terms of supporting capacity building and also you and usa I can answer very quickly the secure world foundation part of this SWF has been involved in supporting the LTS discussions from from the very early stages and now that we have these adopted guidelines we continue to promote awareness of the guidelines we are running programs either independently or jointly with you and usa to promote awareness and build capacity in space law and policy development there is a program called a project on space law for emerging space actors which we are working jointly with you and usa we also have a handbook for new space actors and these are just some of the examples that of work that we are doing indeed this this webinar is an example of work that we are doing to raise awareness and help build capacity for guideline implementation the second part of the question had to do with a possible role of the UN's regional centers for space science and technology affiliated to the UN Nicholas I don't know if there's anything you want to add quickly on that side of of the question yeah I'm trying to get my video okay my video is on thank you so yes thank you Peter just to repeat what you said and I agree with you yeah indeed we are teaming up also with the governmental donors on a project that we launched last year on capacity building and fostering a responsible space activities so it's mainly a capacity building project in space law and policy where obviously we will have to make a connection to the long term sustainability of space activities I would like to mention also that the legal subcommittee has a parallel process not directly related to LTS but it's under the working group on the status of treaties where the legal subcommittee for some years now have been developing a guidance document on how to really fostering awareness global awareness also really targeting emerging space nations on on the need to really have a full picture and full understanding of responsibility and liability of space activities and the the long term sustainability is connected to that I mean the document draft document is already available and and this is really an important process where the legal subcommittee is trying to look into now how to foster capacity building and awareness increasing in the overall responsibility of states in their implementation of the of the obligation and rights under the legal regime of after space so of course a long term sustainability will only grow and of course obviously you and us will will stand ready to do more in this regard now the regional centers yes indeed and I saw the question earlier the regional centers provide really an important a very important capacity building and training and education in space science and technology on our space activities so it's mainly on science and technology but there is also of course a connection there to to law and policy and we will probably look more and more deeper deeply into how we can we can embark on on a I would say the cooperation a deeper cooperation with the these regional centers in fostering long term sustainability but again what is important is that the guidelines as they have been presented and adopted they are a governance the the guidelines is the governance instrument and they are targeting governments and intergovernmental organizations so it's very important to know that aspect thank you thank you so we we are almost running out of time and I want to respect everybody's time who's joined us today so unfortunately we won't get through to the other questions in the list but very interesting questions just want to point out that the recording and the transcript of this webinar will be made available and you will be able to refer to it on the website sometime soon and I'm sure it'll be possible for us to send around a link to all the registered participants I would now like to wrap up the the webinar and I would like to thank all of our panelists for their excellent and thought-provoking contributions to our discussion today and to all of you our online participants for attending the event and for your thoughtful questions and unfortunately we couldn't get to all of them but I hope that you found the discussions interesting and thought-provoking. In closing I'd like to thank my secure world colleagues Victoria Samson and Brian Whedon for co-moderating the panels today and to Josh Walney and Jan Asher for their technical support thanks to them for all the preparatory effort they put into this and a big thank you again to all of our panelists for sharing their insights and expertise with us. Please keep an eye on our website for upcoming events and in particular I'd like to take the opportunity to draw your attention to our upcoming summit for space sustainability which will be an online event from 9 to 11 September and the link for this event is displayed on the screen right now and with that I would like to bring this event to a close thank you again for attending we wish you all the best and stay safe thank you