 All right, so good afternoon everyone. My name is Ian Christensen. I'm the director of private sector programs for the Secure World Foundation Thank you for joining our panel this afternoon on undoing the damage. What are the priorities for cleaning up space? From this conference and others, it is very clear that we have agreement that action is needed to mitigate orbital debris. From our presentations already, we've seen that operators are seeing cost to operations from debris and from collision avoidance activities. We're seeing that governments are implementing strategies and initial programs to develop active debris removal capabilities. But to achieve this action, prioritization will be needed. Debris, as much as we talk about it as a single category of objects, is not a uniform set. When we're talking about active debris removal or prioritizing cleaning up space, do we prioritize large objects or small? Do we prioritize higher risk objects from a known set or do we look at developing capabilities that can be more flexible? Do we look at providing just-in-time or on-demand collision avoidance capabilities? There are also market and business priorities to consider. How do we put together and establish sustainable companies and markets for debris removal? Where does debris removal and cleaning up space fit into the broader set of an in-space economy? In this panel on undoing the damage, what are the priorities for cleaning up space? Our panelists are charged with answering these questions, not just on the panel but in your day-to-day programs, agencies and companies. So welcome to this panel and I want to just very briefly introduce the panelists that we do have. And we have one more in route who will be arriving just in time. So as we proceed from my right, Dr. Anusha Ansari is an astronaut and a serial high-tech entrepreneur. She is currently the CEO of the X-Prize Foundation, the world's leader in designing and operating large incentive competitions to solve humanity's grand challenges. Chris Blackerby is the group CEO at Astroscale. Sorry, I almost gave you a field promotion there. So Astroscale is a global company looking at sustainable space operations to debris removal and space servicing. Prior to Astroscale, Chris was the NASA attache in Tokyo with the responsibility for the entire Asian region. Jacob Geer is the chief of staff at the UK Space Agency where he's been part of that agency since 2016 having joined from the Ministry of Defense. As chief of staff for UKSA, Jake works closely with the agency's chief executive to deliver and drive strategy and new projects. Dr. Holger Craig is the head of the space safety program office at the European Space Agency where his responsibilities cover a scope including space weather, planetary defense and space debris. And I see in the back getting miked up Luke Paget from ClearSpace. He's the CEO and co-founder of ClearSpace, which is a early stage company, a great company based in Lausanne, Switzerland, focusing on space debris and in-orbit services for sustainable space operations. And so I also want to begin this panel as we have in the past with a prerecorded presentation to give some perspective on the scope of the space debris problem. This presentation will be from Dr. Satomi Kawamoto who is a senior researcher and manager for space debris comprehensive measures at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, more commonly known as JAXA. Dr. Kawamoto's presentation will discuss debris removal projects underway at JAXA as well as the overall context for the debris environment. So if we could cue the video up please, thank you. Hello, my name is Satomi Kawamoto. I'm a senior researcher at JAXA and I have been studying debris removal technologies and debris modeling. It's my great pleasure to deliver a brief panel talk. Let's begin with the need for orbital debris mediation activities now. We have used the debris revolution model to predict future debris populations. The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, IRDC, published a study on the stability of the future Leo environment. Results from the six agencies are consistent. Even with a 90% compliance with commonly adapted mitigation measures, the Leo debris population is expected to increase in the next 200 years as catastrophic collisions between orbiting objects continue to occur. According to the standard NASA breakup model, a catastrophic collision of a massive object can generate thousands of cataloged fragments larger than 10 centimeters. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of centimeter-sized pieces and millions of millimeter-sized debris would also be generated. Cataloged objects impose considerable burdens on collision avoidance for spacecraft, while uncataloged objects pose the risk of collision damage, sometimes mission-ending risk. Because these numerous pieces of debris eventually spread out over a broad range of orbits due to perturbation, it is difficult to remove each piece individually. It is more efficient to remove the large debris that is a source of those fragments before they collide than to remove numerous fragments after one. Since current avoidance operation can avoid collision with cataloged objects, the biggest problem is the millimeter- to centimeter-sized debris. They are too small to track from the ground, but too large to protect against. The details of the small debris environment are not yet known. It will be too late if we wait until there are too many small fragments accumulated from multiple collisions. Early removal of large debris that is a source of smaller fragments is necessary. Some say that debris mitigation requires priority over remediation because it is more efficient. It's true, for objects that are launched in the future, mitigation measures should be in place first. But their lift objects already present should be removed before they collide and produce many small fragments. This is also a form of prevention. It's exceedingly difficult and costly to deal with after a large number of pieces have been generated. It is necessary to remove a few large debris per year, the objects with high collision probability and in high orbit where collision impacts remain for long periods. The result of this study showed only statistically increasing trend in the number of the objects larger than 10 centimeters. Some argue that this increase is acceptable, but the situation differs with orbital altitude. Comparing to cumulative collision probability for each orbital altitude one, the collision probability at around 700 to 900 kilometers is currently the highest. But we are concerned that collision will occur at altitude around 900 to 1000 kilometers and the collision probability will increase. This is because there is already a large amount of large intact debris at this altitude where atmospheric drag is low. Thus, they will orbit for more than hundreds of years. On the other hand, there are many debris fragments below 800 kilometers now, but the area to mass ratio of these fragments is large, so they orbit decay relatively quickly thanks to atmospheric drag. Some large debris objects in clouded regions have a 10% or greater chance of collision within the next 200 years and several hundreds such debris are present. If removal is delayed, the number of debris generated by collision remains high, so it is necessary to start removal as soon as possible. There are many candidates for ADL, so there is no need to worry about which is the top one priority. The top one will not necessarily be the first to collide. Rather, removing a large number of debris pieces as quickly as possible will reduce the likelihood of environment degradation. Candidate removal targets have already been identified. For example, McKnight's paper created a top 50 list by merging the ADL targets proposed by 11 teams from around the world. But that is still not enough to stabilize the environment. With the ADL of 50 objects, the number of increase could be reduced, but other debris may also collide and so more objects should be removed. The targets should be reviewed from year to year and continue to be removed. Just in time, collision avoidance might also be effective for preventing collisions if it can be dealt with deterministically, although it is not a permanent solution. Among those debris, it is technically and non-technically easier to start removal from the upper stage of the rocket. There are many spent upper stages and there they have few confidentiality issues. Since its shape is relatively simple with no solar panels, they do not exhibit complicated tumbling motion. Light curves and radar observation have also confirmed that some upper stage seems to be gravity gradient stable without rotation. Because of uncertainties in solar activity and attitude motion, deterministic collision prediction are at best limited to a few days. It is difficult to predict which debris will collide in the long term. Based on statistical prediction, a large number of targets must be removed and the effect of removal will not be immediately apparent. ADL has also caused some legal challenges. Therefore, cooperation from all over the world is necessary to maintain and improve the orbit, which is a valuable resource for everyone in the world, as is the same with other environmental issues on the ground. I hope government will show responsible behavior, start ADL as soon as possible and cooperate to establish a framework for continuous ADL. JAXA has been developing technologies for low cost removal of large debris such as non-cooperative rendezvous, motion estimation, capture and highly efficiently propulsion system for the orbit. Currently JAXA is working on a project called CRD2, commercial removal of debris demonstration with commercial partnership to pave the way for low cost area realization. Phase 1 aims to safely approach and take images of the spent Japanese rocket upper stage, a real large sized debris on orbit, and demonstration spacecraft is scheduled for launch in fiscal year 2022. Phase 2 will demonstrate the debris capture and lowering its orbit. CRD2 will follow JAXA's safety standards for on-orbit servicing missions and it will be a good example for future ADL missions to limit the generation of new debris from the proximity operations and the safety orbit of the target. Since this is a technology demonstration, the target is a Japanese-owned debris to avoid any legal and ownership issues and at a low altitude to minimize environmental impact in case of an accident. The technology to be demonstrated will be effective for the necessary ADL to improve the orbital environment in the future. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you Dr. Kalamota and apologies for the slight technical fun at the beginning of that video. We will work with it and here we are. So let's move into the panel. As we've done with the other panels at this conference, we have a set of initial questions to kind of start things going and then we really will look for a discussion and for audience Q&A. So please open up the HUVA app, navigate to this session and fire away with questions and we'll get to them as we go here. Holger, I want to start with you. It's a similar question to what we asked Dr. Kalamota to present but our panel is entitled, Undoing the Damage. What are the priorities for cleaning up space? We're going to undo the damage. We may need to start with knowing what that damage is. ESA publishes an annual space environment report out of your program. Where do we as a community stand with regards to the debris population that we're dealing with and performance to debris mitigation guidelines? Thank you Ian and thanks for inviting me to this very nice panel. I'm glad to be here. Let's start with some naked numbers. So we're talking about 36,000 objects larger than the size of a soccer ball and then around 1 million above 1 centimeter size and 150 million above 1 millimeter size. Many of you will know that even a millimeter object is still very hazardous when impacting on spacecraft. One of ESA spacecraft actually suffered from such an impact quite dramatically a few years ago. That's the situation that we have and the counter measures. When we talk about undoing the damage it sounds a bit like the damage is already complete but actually the problem is the damage goes on and we need to stop the damage. And therefore our environment report not only looks at the situation but it looks also at how well we implement mitigation prevention options. And the two most important prevention measures are passivation, getting rid of all fuel pressure and charges and batteries and to dispose the whole space system up a stage in spacecraft after the mission as a total. And this is not done well enough by far not. So the report shows that there's still 10 breakups every year, explosive breakups, although we are doing passivation. Many of them are old objects but also really brand new objects that have been launched, they break up. And also the disposal and disposal is not satisfactory at all. There's still two or three dozens of spacecraft at upper stages getting stranded every year. And there, of course, this is a situation where active removal wouldn't make much sense because you would not even catch up with what is left behind. So we need to stop the damage and then undo it. And you could ask why is that happening? Is that ignorance? And I believe it's not ignorance, it is just technically difficult to do it. After 10 years of a mission to implement a maneuver where you need basically all subsystems to work and enough fuel, that is still a challenge. When a spacecraft comes out of the launcher dead without any function, dead on arrival, it will not even have the chance to do the orbit even if it is prepared for it. So these are the technical challenges we are dealing with. It's a technical problem for which we need technical solutions, but I guess that's what we are going to discuss in the next minutes. Yeah, so the old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? So we have to, as part of our prioritization, the prevention, we shouldn't forget about that, even if we're going to talk a lot about the other part of the equation here on this panel. So thank you for that. So Jake, going to turn to you next. We've heard several very high level, very important announcements from the UK government this week, starting from Israel Highlands' remarks last night to the minister's announcements this morning and as well referenced in your CEO's remarks yesterday as well. Clearly debris removal and sustainable space is a priority for the UKSA and the UK government as a whole. Can you tell us a little bit more about where the initiatives in the agency on active debris removal stand? Sure thing. So firstly, what a pleasure to hear his Royal Highness in particular speak yesterday as a Brit. That was a great moment for me. I've heard my minister a lot and my CEO a lot, right? I haven't heard his Royal Highness Prince Charles speak before, so that was really great to see yesterday. In terms of the initiative, our minister mentioned £5 million of funding for the next phase. So this will be a phase B study for those familiar with the mission life cycle to get to our preliminary design review by the start of 2024. So we're using that to go down from three companies that have currently completed phase A, Astroscale, Clear Space, SSTL, who I saw earlier. They're the three currently there. We're going to downslit to two from there to go to the next phase. And then at the time we've spent that £5 million to do the detailed study work, downslit further to one company to take us forward to implementation around about, as I said, the start of 2024. And that's important to us because that national mission helps us to complement the other work we do. The UK is the largest contributor to the ESA Space Safety Programme. We're really proud of that fact. We're proud to work with Holger and his team. We support other wider initiatives, particularly licensing, so the ELSA-D spacecraft, the ELSA-M spacecraft, to look at particular subsets of removing legacy objects, so end of life maybe for constellation customers. But we want to take this national step to try and drive the price point down of date removal to do it more commercially to try and make it something that's down in its own two feet. So it's not always a government customer making date removal a reality. We're trying to move it to more of a commercial basis. There's still a way to go for that, right? But the thing that we want to mention about this mission in particular, it'll be primed by a UK company bringing in that commercial sector's ways of efficiencies. It'll remove multiple pieces of debris in one go. We don't think it's good to send up one servicer to remove one piece of debris. We're going to go for two or more with one servicer. And that servicer will then remain in orbit to be serviced, so refueled, replenished somehow, to bring in in-orbit servicing in due course. So this is the starting mission, this national date removal mission. We'll then go to an in-orbit servicing mission as we go to the middle of this decade, and then in-orbit manufacturing as we reach the end of the 2020s, building on the services that are being left in space by these current missions to build a longer term capability. And that's important for us because we think there's both a great market there in in-orbit servicing and manufacturing, but also it's part of that low-earth orbit economy. That's something that we think that the UK needs to support for both our national ambitions and also because it's the future of mankind. And that really can inspire the next generation of students, children, entrepreneurs, scientists to really get involved in the space sector and become our next skilled workforce and great set of people as well. All right. Thank you, Jake. So Satomi, Holger, Jake have outlined both some of the challenges and the opportunities I think governments are offering in response to those challenges. Let's turn to the other half of the panel here, and that is our non-governmental and private sector representatives. So Chris, Luke, I'm going to start with the two of you. Both Astroscale and ClearSpace spoke at last year's Summit for Space Sustainability. In that intervening year, your programs, your companies, and your technology have continued to rapidly progress. What updates can you provide us since last year? What are you doing to respond to the opportunities their government colleagues here have talked about? And what milestones should we be looking out for? So Chris, I'll start with you and then come to Luke. Great. Thank you. And thanks for having us on the panel. Before I start about Astroscale, I want to highlight something Jake is saying about this is a panel about ADR and removing debris, but it's really a panel about satellite servicing, and we're all talking about this off-sighted trillion-dollar space economy. That is not going to happen without satellite servicing, and not satellite servicing that a government R&D mission funds. High budgets, maybe longer time frames, delays, that's not going to do it. We need it mature, focused, safe, reliable, and efficient, satellite servicing capability brought by the private sector, and that's the only way that we're going to realize the potential of the orbital economy. So we can talk about all of these other things, but that is going to be a linchpin for how we move forward. And so to do that, we need vibrant, viable companies to carry on that mission. And so then to your question, Ian, we've been working on the three pillars that we always talk about at Astroscale, building the technology, working with policy makers and regulators, and focusing on how to show the economic value of servicing and debris removal. We're always doing that, but more than that, we're building a company. We're having to raise money, which we did last year. In December, we raised $109 million. We're having to recruit and retain people, which we've done. We've grown now to about 310 people globally. And then put in place the governance structures and the policies and the procedures that we have to do to build a company. So it's been an exciting year and a challenging year, and it's going to continue, but that's kind of to get a focus on what we're trying to do here. We're both trying to drive toward a new ecosystem and develop a new economy while at the same time building a company. So it's challenging, but that's what makes it so exciting. Luke? That's very impressive. It is. We follow suit. To give a little how it evolved over the past couple of years, beginning of 2020, Clear Space was five people. Today, we are 70. We have offices here in the UK, in Switzerland. We just opened an entity in Germany. We are setting up in the US. So there's a lot of things that need to be done at the same time. I think as we seen it from the beginning, the right timing to address space debris issues and in-orbit servicing, build up the roadmap for in-orbit servicing is now. It's the time we have to do it. We cannot wait. We cannot postpone that kind of problems to the next generation. And we've been incredibly lucky that there's been so much leadership from ESA from UKSA to drive solutions and to start really doing what counts means missions. Go fly. Do something that goes to orbit. Over the past two years, there's a couple of things that we had to bring together. The first one is how do we make a safe mission, a safe first mission to remove an object which is completely non-corporative. In the Clear Space mission, the objective is to pick up a part of a rocket body which is non-corporative, which has not been prepared to be picked up in orbit. Most of the objects of there are like that. They are objects that are unprepared. In the future, we hope that this is going to change and we're going to have more and more docking interfaces on the platforms that we can go intervene on. But to get started today, this is definitely a problem that needs solving. So what we did over the last couple of years is essentially building up the team, making sure that we have the right disciplines and competences in the organization, bringing together an industrial team of about 20 companies that work with us, that bring a lot of experience in the exercise. And we just went through our first key performance gate with ESA, which has been an intensive exercise where we looked at all the dimensions of the mission. There's a strong focus on safety. I think there's two things that need to be achieved is at the same time, an operation that is reliable and safe and that will be cheap. Those are really the two dimensions that need to be addressed. We have to make predictable operations in orbit. We have to make sure we don't produce more debris than we had before we got to orbit. And then at the same time, the other main objective is to bring the cost of those operations down. So a big part of the Clear Space One mission is that it will allow us to return a lot of non-recurring engineering costs and address all the core problems to make a reliable and safe operation where we can actually build a roadmap to bring the cost down. And on the UK say mission, we go toward a reusable platform and there's no doubt that the future of that kind of operation is going to be reusable platforms. We expect that there's going to be essentially two approaches. One is for really large objects where you know you have to do a control reentry because the object is too big. You have a three-ton, four-ton or seven-ton platform to pick up. And in that case, the mission profile will be one-to-one, very likely. But the objects to go pick up also have a very different cost profile in terms of mission. If the total cost of ownership in orbit is, let's say, 700 million or more than a billion, then it's a different equation than if it is a satellite that costs to produce per unit a million and maybe in a replacement costs 3 million. So it's a very different mission profile. So you have to be ready to do that kind of operation. So we have been working across the board on all those activities and have a very dynamic team on board. That's where we stand. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Luke. I think part of what I'm hearing from your remarks is this is not just about the technology. Maybe not really all that much about the technology. It's about scalability and making this into a marketable, sustainable service. And how that fits in to a broader and space ecosystem. And I'm already seeing some questions related to that in the chat, so we'll come back to that. And now I want to turn to Anusha, X-Prize Foundation and Space Debris. That's not an association that I would have normally made. So I know there are some things that you're working on. Can you tell us about the foundation's interest in this topic and whether there might be a future prize to talk about? Of course. Well, if anything, I would make the connection there because we've been the instigator of commercialization of space from our inception. And that's how we came to be actually. So this would be when launched our third space competition. The first one was to just open up commercial space with reducing the cost of access. The second one was a Lunar Lander competition, which didn't get awarded but still created a lot of interest. And many of the teams got, you know, million dollar, hundred million dollar plus contracts from their space agencies. So we considered us the best failure we had because we accomplished the mission without awarding the competition. And this one is challenging. I think the panelists talked about the different aspects of this competition and we haven't finished the design right now. Most of our panelists and many in the audience have been interviewed to get the different points of view on where should we focus the competition and whether the competition is needed. And we've come to the conclusion that it is needed. And there are three areas that we're focusing on in order to determine what type of debris, what type of competition we should design. One area, one issue right now is awareness. In these rooms, amongst these audience, there is no need to create awareness. We all understand that this goes beyond just a space economy, but it is critical to security of our society and our way of life. But that awareness does not, you know, translate in the public. So one of the things we do really well at XPRIZE is create public awareness through the competition and announcing the competition and getting engagement from the public. The other one is the technological hurdles that has to be, you know, the technological advancement that we need for the different kinds of debris that we need to address. And it's great that we have like three companies that the UK Space Agency is supporting, different countries are supporting one or two companies. But another aspect of a competition, an XPRIZE competition is that we never try to actually predict a solution or approach to solving a problem. But we try to design competitions with very specific measurable objectives that teams have to accomplish. And we let them come up with their own approach and a solution. And that leads to really novel and original approaches sometimes because many of the teams are students in universities with very low budgets. And just really their enthusiasm is what's driving them. However, because of the awareness creation, they end up being able to get funding and create something and then get support from larger companies or, you know, government space agencies. And I think that type of, you know, large scale innovation is needed for this type of complex problem that we're talking about. And the last one, which I think different panels at different part of this past two days have talked about is the whole policy side of this issue. That is a grand challenge that needs to be resolved if we were going to have a very robust economy around this. Now, Chris mentioned the fact that this is not about debris removal and I agree and that's why I didn't talk about the business model. Because I think any company that builds a business in this area, they have to go beyond debris removal and into becoming a service station in orbit. And that's an assumption that I think a lot of companies actively working in this area have made. So I think the cost will come down and there will be a business model made around it. We just need to get them off the ground. So I think with a lot of activities around the globe, I think we can get that done. And just before lunch, we had the folks from World Economic Forum and Future of Space discuss SSR. And I think long term SSR hopefully will become like lead certification. I hope and I wish that it becomes a little bit more forceful in terms of requiring it before you sign a contract. We know anyone requiring it so it becomes something that even though it's voluntary, it becomes a necessity for businesses to have it. But so long term I am hopeful that we won't generate a lot more debris. But we're at the point like our environmental issues. We're at the point that we can't wait until a point that we say, okay, there won't be any debris. We've done so much damage that we do need to clean it up. And we're looking at three options right now. Of course, one is rocket bodies that will look like a single mission, not reusable. It could, from an awareness perspective, it will be a good driver of conversation to change policy. The other one is mid-sized, cube-sat or larger, multiple targets and removing it. And then the last one is a debris cloud, which is the most challenging technologically but also the most danger. So we're still trying to evaluate all the different aspects that I mentioned between these three and potentially maybe combining two of them together. And would love to collect any opinions you all have directly or indirectly later on. Thank you for that. So I appreciate the linkage that you've articulated that as a space economy develops and becomes more present, more functional, more robust, that begins to create more of an incentive model for both the prevention aspects of what Holger was talking about and some of the solutions that we're talking about. I think that's a point that maybe is sometimes not emphasized as much as it could be about that feedback loop there. Thank you for that. You also mentioned towards the end of that some of the technological and type of debris object trades that are involved in this. And I want to dive down on that a little bit with my next set of questions. And so I'm going to return to Jake and Holger here. So both of your agencies as well as JAXA have established specific contracts to go after specific debris objects. Different stages of these missions, right, but where we've established them. Can you tell us a little bit about the factors that went into selecting the objects that you've selected for those missions? Sure. So our mission, our national mission, and obviously we're closely involved in the AdDios mission too, is going after multiple targets. I talked to her about having one service and bringing out multiple targets. So for us those targets have to be UK owned. They have to be on our list, on our catalogue list that removes some legal barriers to removing other countries debris. And it also gives us a bit more ability to look at those targets because we know a lot about them. They have to be non-cooperative. So we don't want to be prepared for capture in some way because we think the technological challenge of removing something that's not supposed to be removed is actually the greatest challenge for our industry and our innovators. They have to be in low earth orbit because we don't particularly see the main, well, we put that differently. As Satomi said, we see the biggest risk in low earth orbit rather than in geo in particular. So we think that's the place that needs to be cleared up first in our priority list. And so that means that the objects don't have to be too far apart. If the concept of operations is to send the servicer up to go and retrieve one spacecraft, to take it down to a lower orbit, release it, de-orbite it and then go up and get another one. That means the targets have to be selected in a certain way to not be too far apart in either altitude or azimuth to make sure that the chaser spacecraft or servicer has the fuel to get there and they can stay on orbit to be refueled in due course as well. So to remove a multiple piece of debris, that's been driving not the decision making that the consortiums have been making and they're starting to come up with the same six to eight targets. We're starting to see the list coming down a lot now, which is quite interesting to see. I think you addressed the very important points there already. Maybe I can bring another dimension into it because this morning we heard a very impressive speech by the minister. He mentioned three keywords, sustainability, commercialization and regulation. And I think this is what we had in mind to be brought together in order to make this happen. So we proposed a mission or we asked for a mission proposal better to be set up by industry where ESA would act as a customer and provide one of its objects to be removed. Why an ESA object because it makes it easier from a legal point of view to start this. We didn't want a demonstration. So we didn't want to see a mission which starts with some sort of target that was brought along. We wanted to really get to a piece of debris, but we didn't want to prescribe which one it was. We wanted commercial factors and considerations to take the lead in what the object is to be removed in view of future recurring missions. And that's how this election was done. And I see this kind of mission is a technical mission and it will even remove a piece of debris, so it will even add to the cleaning list. But it is also a piece of policy because we see it as also one of the vehicle to tackle the problem of undoing the damage, but also preventing the damage from growing further. This is something that we call the zero debris policy, which is something I want to come back to. So where you make active removal actions mandatory so that they become whenever disposer fails, which first of all, we stipulate a better behavior on the disposer side. And for the remainders, because technical systems will always have a certain failure rate, creates a market for the removal with the net effect that nothing is left behind. So something that you have in every national park with the stuff that you bring in, you need to get out again. This is what we want to achieve and perhaps set up in ESA for our own missions by 2030. And no regulator will do that when we don't see that the technology is working and working cost efficiently and therefore the agencies need to move ahead and do these pathfinder missions to show that it works. Thank you. So we've got just over 30 minutes left here, so I'm going to start to weave in some of the audience questions and we'll see where the path takes us here. So, Olga, you just referred us back as part of your remarks there to some of the strategies and commitments that were made announced in the minister's speech this morning. And I want to turn to our three non-governmental representatives here again. And Chris, I'm going to start with you. So as I reflect on that announcement, I think part of what you was talking about, Minister Freeman, was an in-space economy and the role of these capabilities as part of that in-space economy. It's a question that comes to mind from that. Talking about one government, the UK government making a significant commitment. We're talking about US and Japan and Europe have also made some commitments. How do these domestic initiatives coalesce around a single strategy or maybe not a single strategy, but a single ecosystem? And what is the role of industry-led groups, such as Confers, of which you serve as our chairman in that coalescence towards a single ecosystem? So you're talking about the policy aspect of it and the regulatory aspect? Well, yeah, the policy and regular aspect and how it relates to the development of an economic ecosystem. Yeah. So I'd first recognize again and thank ESA, the UKSA, JAXA for the commitment toward R&D development, because that's the big step. We've got to prove the technology in orbit to get customers to purchase it. We're not going to purchase something if you don't think it's going to work. So we've got to show that it works. And we're testing that out right now with our ELSA D mission in space, which have had a lot of technical successes. And then this is just the next step onto that to continue to show that we can prove out the technologies. So that's the one side that the governments are needed to focus on. And the other is this policy and regulatory side. And the minister talked very strongly today about how the UK is going to commit to putting in place regulatory measures, to supporting the insurance as a way to support the entire ecosystem of this commercial space. But they're talking about that in Japan, too. And they're talking about that in the US, too. And one of the things the minister said today, which I thought was interesting, he wants the UK to lead, but he also wants it to be international. And I think the other countries are saying the same thing. So how does that work? It sounds a bit contradictory to me. Every country wants to be the role model, the poster child for driving this forward, but then also wants to work internationally. I think it's possible. I think we can do it. But we do really need to work together on how that happens, both at the government level, but then with the commercial sector as well. And Ian mentioned CONFERS, or CONFERS. We might solve that. The chair, and I don't know how to pronounce it. So CONFERS as an industry body that is focused on this as well. Focused on developing best practices and standards to drive us forward. Now that sounds like the same thing the minister talked about today. So how do we make sure that the industry groups are also part of this? How do we make sure we're not developing siloed ideas and concepts that are developed in parallel? And that's something that I don't think we have a good answer for yet. But it is something that I think we need to address holistically. And one of the things that we're doing on CONFERS now is we're having government agencies able to join as observing members, which we didn't before. CONFERS has been around for five years and for these first five years it's been an industry-only group. But we recognize we need to expand that membership. And then to show about the influence, I'll end on this, the influence of the industry and the growth of this. I mean just hearing Luke and I talk about everything that has happened over the past year should say enough about how excited investors are and people are to join this industry. CONFERS is another great example. Formed in 2018 with five founding members, CONFERS now has 60 members. So that's 60 companies around the world who have some interest in satellite servicing. That's an incredible testament to where this industry is going. And that's thanks to investment and support from the governments and it's thanks to investors who recognize, hey this is a place I can make some money because that's why investors are giving money in because they want to get a return. So they see that this is a real viable industry. And so now we just need to continue to talk between the industry and the governments to make sure that we're going to call us toward the same goal. Now, I said all that stuff and I don't have a good answer for your question Ian, so I'm sorry. I'll turn that over to Luke. Luke, what do you think? I think actually that they're complementary in the sense that policy will essentially drive the what. What should be done to have a sustainably striving space industry, a space economy. And CONFERS is more about how. What are the right standards? How do you kind of make those services predictable and define what a quality standard should be to make sure that what's implemented is actually safe and working as it should and that we all kind of speak the same language. So I think it's a very complementary exercise. One thing that really strikes me is that for years I've been in a lot of conference and there's a lot of talk, right? We talk a lot. We talk a lot about the fact that something should be done. We talk a lot that at the beginning was about having better data. Everything was about we should have more better data. And then it was about and what we hear a lot is is it the smallest, the largest small debris? I'm sorry if you have a question about that. Is it the largest small debris that should be addressed first? And all those are talks. Should there be policy that talks as well? I think the question is action. What we need is action. And what ISA does and what UK is saying, what JAXA does is action. And action means not only deciding we do something but also putting money on the table to make it happen and engaging into making it a success. And I think this is really what's needed today. This is where it needs to go. And policy also is action and defining standards is action. So what's really the priority I think today is action. If I could summarize, act, make it happen, right? Get to orbit, make it happen. And this is, I think it's a transformational change to the way we operate in space. And it's always really hard to predict the future. It's hard to imagine how it's going to work, right? It's a little like, imagine if you invent a car, right, like 150 years ago. And you have this fantastic machine. It's got four wheels. It can carry people everywhere. And you tell to everybody, this thing is going to transport a huge amount of people in the future and bring goods really far. And people would just tell you, you're crazy. There's no roads, right? And it's impossible to build up many roads, right? It's impossible. It's impossible to remove all those debris. We added what? 74 new big debris, complete, complete. We should see derelict because they're very valuable and expensive satellites or rocket bodies, right? But we added over the last 20 years, 74 per year, every single year, 74, right? This means that in addition to the 5,000 that are on the list of their McKnight, right? So we should remove at least 74 per year if we want it to be stable, minimum. That's the smallest amount, right? If we talk about removal and that's not talking about all the other services like intervening in orbit, expanding the capacity of, I don't know, a geostationary satellite, why not? Refueling stuff. So the size of this servicing industry is much bigger than most people just imagine right now. It's a big operation. It is not about one or two companies. This is an industry. So I want to pick up on that. So let's take, we just said this. 74 objects we need to remove. I can't verify that number, but I'll take your word at it. I see two companies up here and I see some technology development programs. So Anusha, I'm going to look at you and ask you this question. How do we go from two companies to enough to address 74 objects a year? Make surprise. But I want to maybe just go back to something Chris said about policy. Because again, policy makes a big difference. And right now we need smart policies because also in a race situation, when it's a race between governments, it's easy to lower the bar and businesses go where the bar is lowered. And by lowering the bar, we make the long-term problem worse. So it's important why the countries want to compete and be and take a bigger share of this new commercial market space economy. It's important to make sure we sort of draw the line that you can't cross. And this sustainability aspect is important. As human beings, we've caused enough issues, whether it is carbon from the atmosphere that we need to remove, debris from space or microplastics from our oceans. And we need to really start looking at the circular economy of way of doing things, building things, building technologies that will not generate a problem later on down the line that we need to address. And I think space actually is a really great place for us to start looking at these circular economies because resources are scarce. And as we expand our footprint, as we travel and explore space and want to build sustainable systems in space, we have to think about reusability. And I think all those technologies that are being developed will come back and help us here. And what we do at XPRIZE or a competition that we launch, we really cast a wide net. So our recent competition, which was the $100 million carbon removal, we had about 6,200 teams registered. And out of that, we went down to about 1,000 teams. We looked at the idea, submitted the judges, 70 judges looked at all those submissions and went down to 600 teams, down to 300, and we just announced our top 15 teams. But to me, it's not about the 15 teams or the one that wins. We got 6,000 teams thinking about this problem. And whether they compete in the competition or not, they are going to many of them continue working on it and are inspired by it. And that's how we really generate a lot of different ideas and approaches and create activity where activity is stagnant. And I think I'm very happy to see as many companies as we have in this space to remove one and orbit service in orbit servicing. Because on the other side, I go to the space investment conferences and I see all these amazing ideas of businesses in space. And as you said, Chris, they can be successful if they don't figure out how to stay in orbit and do it sustainably, cost-effectively. And they can't build all the technologies themselves. But whether it's energy manufacturing, health and other production in space, earth observation, communication, all sorts of things that we're doing, we need this type of technology that needs to be sustainable. All right. Thank you. So about 20 minutes remaining, and I'm going to do something that I did in my other panel the other day. We're going to go into a lightning round here so that I can get to some of the questions that are from the audience that aren't, your great audience is many more than we're going to be able to address in that 20 minutes. So I'm going to put people on the spot as I go here. Now I had a question, scroll down and give me just a quick second to, okay. So, Luke, I'm going to start with you because you're my closest victim here. So if we take as an assumption that we are going to have a commercial market for ADR services, it's not going to be a government solely dependent upon government. What is commercial industries incentive to pay for the re-removal? Okay, right now? Right now and in the future, yeah. Right now, right now none. At this stage, very limited, right? Obviously, there's ESG incentives, right? The operators want to be sustainable and responsible. The dimension of responsibility is really important. If you look at what one would did, they really integrated that from the start in their concept. The question will be how much will they be ready to pay, right? We're all very sustainable until we have to pay for it. That's the more challenging part. What we believe will happen is that you can just look at the trends, right? The trends of how this is all going to evolve in the coming years. And they're predictable. You can see how many more launches per year and how this is growing. You can see how many more debris is in orbit and how this is growing. And then you can see also how much profit is going to grow in North orbit and how North orbit is shifting slowly to a profit center from a cost center. I mean, a few years ago, not much money was made in Leo, right? We're starting making a lot of money. So if you disrupt an operation that does a lot of money, there's definitely going to be liabilities, much more than if it's made. So we think that all those trends go in a direction where at some point the change will just be absolutely necessary. And that's to pass with the Eider. Once operators make their calculation of risk and risk profile, they feel they should be insured against failures, right? Like cars are on the motorway. The other aspect is very likely that policy will be written to cover for that. And it will push operators to actually be insured as we don't let the car go on the motorway uninsured, right? The same, we don't let the satellite go into space uninsured for what could actually degrade the environment. So we don't know exactly what will happen first. What we can do is that all the trends drive to a point where the equilibriums are going to change. And most of the change in the history happened abruptly. And everybody's surprised, but then if you really look at it, it's just underlying trends that reached a level where the balances, the equilibrium changed, right? And that's what we look at when we look at the future. So we think this is going to happen just because it's unavoidable. All right, thank you. So, Hohler, for you, we've been talking a lot about ADR on this panel. A question is, what is the potential of impact of ADR on space sustainability compared to the impact and positive impact of design practices, the satellite design practices, or things like carrying capacity threshold metrics? It's a big question to ask shortly, but yeah. There's a lot in there. I think we need all of these. They belong together. And I think it should be a trade-off. I believe we should not wait for a situation where active removal and all these kind of measures become driven by the risk that will be a bit too late. We need to provide a policy incentive already now. And in our view and our Director General very much support this and we also hope that our member states support this is that we can achieve a situation where for our missions the object will have to be mitigated, whatever it takes. And then it's up to the designer to invest more into the technology on board to have the right redundancy to make it work or use the deorbitant kit or use active removal. It doesn't matter in the end, the object needs to be out. We need to provide the technology for that. That is clear. No regulator will move when this is not there. But as an agency, we can also move because we could make that already applicable to our own missions. And then hopefully pave the way through this. Sustainability rating is something else. There I think sustainability rating will play a role once we manage the situation of stopping the creation of new debris we need to look at the past and we need to look at what has been left behind in the history of spaceflight. And there you have nobody to charge the responsibility for because these objects have been left decades ago. And this is a different mechanism policy-wise. But also the selection of the object will then be driven not so much by the owner but it will be driven by the criticality on the environment. And there we can use sustainability rating to identify how critical an object is. All right, thank you. Jake, you're next in the row here. And before I ask this question, I just want to again say it was a pleasure working with you and really appreciated how great of a partner you were. Can I ask a dangerous question now? Go ahead. So for the UKSA, would you along with technology development program and the funding initiatives announced this morning, would you also consider regulatory requirements and incentives for operators to purchase ADR or do PMD as a regulatory mechanism? Sure, we would definitely consider that, I think so. I don't think we do it unilaterally. I don't think we do it without other nations, other regulators around the world doing the same thing. And that's kind of what you spoke to earlier and yourself and your shades. It's about like-minded nations doing the same thing at the same time to make it clear to you guys from the commercial sector and academia what is the right thing to do and the fact that you can't go somewhere else a different jurisdiction and find an easier or less sustainable route to market. Not that people want to do that now because corporately ESG is stopping people doing that. But I don't think we do that on our own as a regulatory nation because actually we need to do it with our like-minded partners too. That wasn't too bad. That was good. Chris, we were talking and you told me you wanted some challenging questions for you. So I've got one. How do we deal with dual use concerns around... No, no, I was simply thinking of something else. So how do we deal with dual use concerns around technologies like active debris removal and on-orbit servicing? That's such a sensitive one. You know, everything is dual use. It's about intention. A pencil is dual use. I can use it to stab somebody. So to say dual use generally, it's about the intention of the operator. So what we're building is something that is to be used for sustainability and for removing debris and for servicing satellites in orbit. And that is the intention that we're going to use it for and the customers that we're going to be working with. And that's something we just have to continue to message out there. That regardless of the customer, the focus is on creating a more sustainable orbital environment. It is not to have any kind of kinetic use. It is not to have any destabilizing geopolitical use. It is to be used for the removal of debris and the servicing of satellites that leads to sustainability. But the fact is, I mean, even right now, a satellite that's up there could be used in a kinetic capacity, even one that's up there now. So it's not going to happen like that. We're not focused on the sustainable aspect of this and we're going to just continue to focus on that as the intention. But it's going to continue to be a sensitive question. I recognize that. It's going to continue to be sensitive. I would say that the language that we use is important as well. It is. Target versus client, things like that. And we're talking about that internally and I'm sure everybody on the panel is thinking about this question internally and how best to address it. Okay. So Anusha, to you there are a couple of questions here in the chat about the role of recycling and reuse as part of this and you've already touched on that in your remarks. But as you look at putting the price to market, how do you consider the role of recycling and reuse in that? Actually it's a great question because we did consider and everyone told us then you have to make this like a 10 to 15 year price, not a five year price. But we were thinking of instead of asking the teams to the orbit to capture and sort of create like a junkyard somewhere in orbit designated area where the relics and the debris can be sort of taken into this designated area and later on as technology for the recycling and reuse expanse with robotics that are being used for manufacturing right now in space, then perhaps whoever owns that or whatever entity or government or maybe the teams own that then they can actually start doing like scrap metal business in space. But it is definitely doable, it's no different than what we do here where the cars are taken to a junkyard and taken apart and sold. So there is a business model for it. I think technology of actually taking things apart and re-manufacturing in space is still some ways away but it doesn't mean that it's not going to happen. I think it would be one of the best businesses in space actually. Thanks for that. I've got about nine minutes left so I'm going to do a couple of questions that is open to anyone on our panel. We have questions about small debris. So we know there's a whole lot of small debris. Anything from the below 10 centimeters that we can track to the lethal non-trackables that we still yet cannot track. There's a lot of that out there. But we can't go up one-in-one pick up small debris. That's not a cost effective thing to do. So how are the technological options we have for addressing the small debris objects that we're dealing with? So that's open to anyone who still chooses. I don't know the solution for it but I can tell you that's one of my favorite ones. It's like the micro plastic in the oceans. It's the hardest one. But I think it's very important if we can figure out a way to, you know, first is to be able to map this in a way that we can actually come up with an effective solution because you don't want to, you know, go pick up one small piece here and then have to use a lot of energy to move to pick another. So if there are debris clouds, which there are, and we can identify them accurately, then they can be targeted. And I think that technology needed to remove it would be easier developed than what we're thinking right now. But it's the hardest problem to solve but it's one of my favorite ones if I were to pick the price. Can I try an answer? I think active removal is also a way to tackle the small debris. It sounds a bit illogic but, you know, the small debris is something that is very sensitive to the atmosphere and will decay more quickly. But every big object that we fail to remove and that is involved in a collision or any other debris generating event immediately recreates hundreds of thousands of small debris. So as long as we don't stop the source of small debris, which is the big object, we don't even need to talk about the small debris. So I think, thanks to the UK support that we have in doing together with our industry these kind of missions, this will also pave the way for solving the problem of small debris and then we can rely on our ally, the atmosphere to wash out the small debris for us. I was about to say the same. Thank you. It's like you better pick it up before it fragments. And I think one way Tim puts it in our team, he says you can look at the environment in terms of sources and sinks, right? Questions, what are the sources of small debris and what are the sinks? You better address the sources before addressing the population. It's a little this saying that says I would repair the fence but I'm too occupied running after the hen, right? That's more or less the concept here. Prevention is better than the cure, and you said it earlier. Prevention is better than the cure. So prevent it from happening before trying to cure it. Okay. So a couple of questions here that kind of touch on the policy things that we've talked about. So the government programs that we've mentioned in the chat, in the panel so far, I'm too used to the virtual world. What is that? I've been, as Jackie said, you specifically chose it had to be a UK object, right? Because there are some legal questions there. So the two-part question, how do we deal with those legal questions around international debris objects and international servicing missions even? And to Luke and Chris, how much are those legal questions around non-cooperative objects and objects from other jurisdictions? How much of those are a barrier to your business right now? I was, I'm actually sneaking into the young professionals session yesterday with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Space lawyers got a special big up, which was not in a round of applause, which doesn't normally happen, right? There was really a strong place for space lawyers to deal with some of these issues. I think particularly around trying to look at how we have agreements between companies or nations, that particular legacy objects, derelicts, maybe more open to removal or manipulation from the companies or the actors from those nations. So two or three nations who come together and put a legal agreement in place, not a new treaty across the world just between those nations. We'd open up a new set of debris objects. If the US, for example, just took that step, all of a sudden a look at a lot of old bucket bodies which people aren't really thinking about now, would become fair targets and that would change the dynamics of the market. So I think there's a potential there without having a whole new outer space treaty which is a decade at least long activity to move ahead on that. Chris? I love that idea and I think it's great. I said other times that we have international cooperation on missions across the board in the space sector. I mean ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb, Earth Observation missions, science missions, cooperation between NISA and NASA and JAXA and NISA, but nothing on satellite services. Now I know that a lot of that comes back to the previous question you asked me, the sensitivities on dual use and I know it's a sensitive subject but that's a great way to drive it forward. It completely opens up the market for the private companies. It shows cooperation between agencies and countries. So I would love to see some kind of cooperative mission in some form like Jake was describing or even more that we can see an international cooperative mission on satellite servicing. That's a great next step and we know that the international component of what we're trying to do is core to creating this industry. I mean we have a global footprint at astro scale and our first mission, LSD, was primarily built in Japan, launched from Kazakhstan, licensed and operated from the UK with ground stations in 13 different places around the world. It's an international business and so let's make it an international cooperation on the agency side as well. We're still waiting for the agency that says why don't you go pick up those Russian rocket bodies? That may be a long wait. Yeah. It's read. All right. So we're coming close to the end of our time so thank everyone in the audience. Apologies for not getting to all of the questions. One minute each wrap up question. What are your priorities in the next, let's say five years to address the challenges that we've been talking about through this panel and I will start with Anusha. Yes, as XPRIZE really narrowing down where competition can be effective to really spur innovation to address some of the challenges that we talked about is the biggest priority for us and then over the five years that we'll take for the price to run to make sure that we really create an international cooperative policy, smart policy across the globe that can really help these businesses come to life and survive and thrive. Chris. Continue to launch our missions build out the technology and grow our company so that we can contribute to this to this economy. And I would also put something out here that we all should be focused on in the next five years is taking immediate action to pull something from what Luke said and also to pull from the young professionals event that we're in right now. Neil talked about about the urgency of what we need to do and I'd say all of us here are working in an incredible industry at an incredible time and we're growing this sector in orbit and 20 years from now we're going to be telling our kids and grandkids that we were here and we helped create this orbital economy but the question is what you have now you have the sustainable orbital economy that you can benefit from we're going to be telling them looking at our shoes and shaking our head and apologizing for leaving them with this polluted orbital environment that they can't use we need to make that decision and take that action right now so that next generations can benefit. That's a good theme as you said Luke it's act right we're going to be telling them in orbit servicing mission in train as well we'll be supporting the add to your mission through ESA there's hopefully another mission coming through ESA as well look at in orbit servicing UK hopes to play a part in that we'll be reforming our regulation as the minister said this morning and then working internationally to move ahead as a group of like minded nations that's a lot of actions that really make a difference one more thing and talking to you about supporting the experts as well thank you and I'm thinking of three goals that we have in ESA again with the strong support from our member states in particular UK and the leadership of industry and you will certainly pick up on that to see the successful removal of a piece of debris followed by the preparation on board of of an element that is happening before this launch so that it can orbit autonomously so these are the bricks and then hopefully also with the help of our member states allowing us to tighten our own policy for ESA missions that by 2030 every object that we bring up we must also bring down using whatever mechanism we have by then and hopefully we will be allowed to do this and we're going to win an XPRIZE would love for you to participate I will try it will be a challenge besides that we obviously our objective is to demonstrate the full value chain of a removal completely of an uncooperative removal which is quite a challenging exercise I have to say I'm very lucky to have the support of ESA's team on that they've developed the reusable platform being able to bring the cost down that's our priority and beyond that build up an amazing team that's what we focus on all right well thank you all I look forward to be back here in five years at the ninth summit for Space Sustainability where Luke we will not have talk we will have results so with that I want to thank the panel I want to thank the audience thank you