 Good afternoon. Welcome to the session on A Day Without Satellites. My name is Ram Jaku. I'm from the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGillie University in Montreal, Canada. Last night at dinner, somebody made a presentation on cyber security. And the data that the gentleman described was fascinating. He said that there are five billion devices connected to the internet and there are half a billion smart phones connected to the internet. Now, very few people know the benefits of the internet because what we know is the benefit of the computers, not the internet. And extremely few people know the risks when you lose internet. And that situation is very much similar to the satellites. The satellites I describe, I consider them invisible hand, invisible device or tool or means to make not only internet work but other devices. So the question here before us, the topic is A Day Without Satellites, we would like to start this session a satellite with satellites. That means what are the benefits of satellites for industry and society as a whole, for you and for me. And then we'll see what are the risks to the sustainable use of satellites, what are the threats to the use of satellites, risks and threats. And then we'll get into what should be done to mitigate these risks or eliminate these risks and to expand the benefits of satellites. So these are the three main questions which has come out of the five questions mentioned in the program. What we'd certainly like to have relatively longer questions and answer session. We will very much appreciate your questions and our panel will describe their answer or try to answer the questions. The panelists here are very well experienced, knowledgeable in the utilization of satellites. We have represented a lot of people working with industry, private industry, person working with NGO and our lady from European Space Agency working in the government. And I'm from the academia. So that means it's a good variety of people who are here to address this issue. We will start with our first panelist, Ray Johnson, who is a senior vice president and chief technology fellow with Lockheed Martin, a private corporation in the United States, one of the top manufacturers of the satellite. So Ray, here we are. What do you think about the benefits of satellites for the society and for the industry? Thank you. I appreciate it. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll do a little bit of an introduction, which will kind of introduce the theme that some of the other panel members will be talking about. I'll begin by introducing some of the benefits, the challenges, and the risks associated with space. As many of you know, space is an essential tool for global security and safety and has many capabilities and benefits that we often take for granted, which is I think what Ram was talking about when comparing it to the internet. And space benefits mankind in many ways. A few of the examples that will make it, I think, very clear to you. The first one is very easy, and that's navigation. And GPS devices and other location-based devices. And so there are currently about one billion GPS devices on the planet, and it's not just GPS. It's not just maps and cars. It's also your iPhone. So when your iPhone, you say, can I talk, can I give you some information about something that's near you? You answer, yes. Well, it's not just your location. Typically, using GPS to give you that location. Another area is space exploration and observation. Both the human space flight component and also the science missions that many nations around the world are taking part in. Satellite television and more broadly, just entertainment-based communication. Weather observations and forecasting. Communications in general. Telecommunications. National security. Disaster management and environmental monitoring. Environmental monitoring is not just monitoring of the environment, which you might consider a science mission. It's also food security, wetlands, resources, a broad variety of uses there. But for space to provide security, space must be secure. And so there are risks to space. There are risks to the satellites that are in space. And a few of those risks are, number one, space debris. Space debris is interesting to me. When I looked over the World Economic Forum Global Risk 2012, in that document, space debris was one of the lowest-rated risks in terms of threat to mankind, threat to the world. Not going to assess whether that's proper or not, but it is, in fact, a statistical fact. But I think it speaks to the fact that people maybe don't understand all the risks associated with what those objects can do to satellites and the impact that it could have. Solar flares, other near-Earth objects, and spectrum issues. Spectrum issues having to do with the radio frequency spectrum and the need to allocate frequencies that can be used. Also secondary impacts, if you think about losing space assets. Down-turned economics, trade, commerce, heightened political international tensions. Part of the national security component of space is awareness of what other people are doing. And so with that awareness comes a sense of security. Natural disasters and the resultant loss of life and property. And then transportation coordination issues, especially air transport. You can think of space and the satellites as having this triad. And the triad is interesting because the conflict between all of these, the competition, the conflict, and the cooperation that nations of the world now experience with regard to space. So how to prevent these problems? International cooperation on space issues and policies and procedures. Collaboration on space debris and near-Earth objects, tracking and mitigation. And so to kind of summarize as we begin introducing the other panelists, many of today's complex global security challenges involve space as a component of the solution. Probably something that's not recognized broadly. And what we're seeing today is that no single nation, not even the United States, is able to go it alone in space. And so that speaks to the need for collaboration. Cooperation is essential. And so the U.S. and other space-faring nations must commit to a global collaboration. And because of this collaborative environment, we need to also look at space from a systems engineering problem where you can think about developing affordable solutions to solve many of these problems that I've talked about. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm fascinated by three elements you mentioned. To ensure space security, space must be secure. I think that's very good. The second is competition, cooperation and collaboration. They are existing or they are prevalent at the same time. It's fascinating to see that. Good introduction to the subject. The next speaker is Shari Naza. She's head of the strategic studies for the European Space Agency. It is logical or natural for me to ask her two type of questions, I will say. First thing is we are in Europe. The European Space Agency spends about four billion euros per year. It is the fourth largest spender in the world on space. What benefits the European taxpayers get of spending four billion dollars? And second thing is, again, with respect to... Euros. Euros, sorry. I'm used to... And also the benefits of satellites for special purposes is something like disaster management, water management, food security, climate change. Okay, Ram. Easy questions there. Okay, yes. So indeed the European Space Agency budget is about four billion euros per year, which amounts about one cinema ticket per year and per European. So it's not much when you look at it in retrospect. It's much less than what we spend on lottery games or pet food or whatever, things like that. But I would like to say for those four billion euros, Europeans as a whole get a lot of return. Economic return, that is a demonstrated fact that each euro invested in space has an economic return in terms of industrial competitiveness in terms of highly qualified employment and not an employment that can be delocalized. It's an employment which is within Europe. We have had several studies done which show that the return is between two and four, depending on the sector. So for each euro invested, Europe gets two to four euros in terms of economic return. But economic return is not all. And I think you said that Europe is the fourth largest spender. I'm not sure about being a spender. There are major space powers in the world, obviously the US, the major space power, but China is now a very large space power. Russia and also Europe, Japan, Canada, India. India is a major space power. What is for sure is that with relatively modest budgets, because our budget is four billion euros, NASA's budget is about 15 billion dollars or 17 billion dollars, and it's not the only spending for space in the US. So Europe has a fairly modest spending in space, but with that it manages quite well. It is certainly a leader in space science, Earth sciences, which is understanding how our planet works, the different components, atmosphere, oceans, lands, ice. How do they interact with each other? So it's a crucial effort to understand climate change and environmental effects. We are also very good in services, but I'm sure Michel will talk about that. We have not invested in human space flight, so this is the sector in which we have not really invested, but we are also leader in commercial launchers with the Ariane Launcher and Ariane Space. I'm sure many of you have heard about that. So I would like to say this spending provides economic return but also societal benefits, improving the knowledge, improving our knowledge of our planet, improving our knowledge of the universe, and also applications, because we mentioned, Ray has mentioned it, you have mentioned it, space can provide many services and nowadays we integrate the different disciplines of space, for instance, Earth observation, telecoms, navigation to provide integrated services. You mentioned disaster management, for instance, space can intervene in all phases of disaster management and mitigation. Space can help forecast. For instance, if you look at forest fires, you want to know the dryness of the soil because that tells you where a forest fire is likely to take place. And with space, with satellites, you can make mapping of soil dryness. You can also, in certain cases, you can have an early warning, you can have an early warning of volcanic eruptions, an early warning of floods, so all these obviously of weather events, you have an early warning of hurricanes, of cyclones, etc. So all these help prepare for the disaster. Once the disaster has happened, unfortunately it does happen most of the time, space means are crucial to manage the operations, the rescue to help with disaster management. So with space means, you can replace the infrastructure which has been destroyed because it is very frequent when you have a disaster that the terrestrial infrastructure is destroyed, telecoms or whatever, so you can immediately replace it with space means. You can also help the rescue teams to locate themselves and to go about because usually when a major disaster has hit a country, infrastructures such as bridges, roads, etc. have been damaged. So you can give the rescue teams a rapid map, what we call rapid mapping, which helps them orient themselves, they know which bridge they can still use or which they cannot use, which road they can still use, where they have to go, where is rescue most needed. So that is crucial in disaster management. It also helps in recovery after the disaster in building up, recovering, space can also help. So you see, if you only take the example of disaster management, space helps. But there are many other sectors. You can talk about education, teleeducation and in India it is a major application for space. You can talk about medicine, telemedicine in many remote areas. The only way to get medical care is through space means because you do not have doctors who are able to come when you have a problem instantaneously, they are remote, so it is a very important application. You mentioned food. It is true that there is an important new application sector for space, which is agriculture. Space can help you maximize the yield of the crops. So you put less fertilizer, which is better for everyone's health, and you maximize the yield of the crops. You also can find spots of resources using Earth observation. So you have many, many sectors. One last sector which I would like to mention is energy. Energy is, we all know, a main challenge for the future. It so happens that when you look at space systems, they have to be energetically correct. It means that they have to be, they have to consume as little as they can. They have to carry as little fuel as they can because they are, I mean space systems are by nature very good at saving energy. And also they use solar cells, which is now very interesting also for terrestrial applications. So space technology helps us with energy. In the future, it could even help us more if we one day manage to gather the energy from the sun and perhaps bring it down to Earth. But also with space means you manage the power grids, you manage the power systems which distribute energy on Earth. And by the way, should we lose the use of satellites in particular GPS, we would have problems with our energy distribution systems because they all rely on GPS for synchronization and distribution of power. So this is one thing we usually forget. Space is also helpful in this type of application. So I think this is what I can say, but I could say much, much more. Thank you very much. Excellent. Two things press me. The first thing is really what I get from my buck. And the economic return is a fascinating to see especially in Europe and of course in North America also due to the financial crisis. So your data is quite convincing to me and I'm sure to our audience also that if you spend one euro, you get at least two to four euros in return. I think that's a great job and I think that's very good. And the other one I think on rescue, search and rescue, if I'm not mistaken, cost part satellite system has saved over 30,000 lives. And I think this is where the wonders of indivisible hand is there. Thank you. Our third speaker is Michel DiRosson and he's the chief executive officer, Utah Sat. Utah Sat, people who do not know, is one of the largest operators of telecommunication system. And Michel tell us about this indivisible hand. If I want to make a call from diverse to small remote town in China, how does it, who takes my call there? Thanks. Thank you, Ram. A word if I may about the Utah Sat. I don't know how many people in this room have seen the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. You may not know that this movie was made from a book, wrote by an American called Clark. And Clark was both a science fiction writer, but he was also a great scientist. And so he was working just, I'm saying this in a school, he was working with paper and a pen and his brain. And he calculated just with his intelligence and education that if you put a satellite at 36,000 kilometers from the earth, it would be at the right altitude so that gravity would not take the satellite down, but also that the distance would not be set, the satellite would simply drift away. So he invented with again a paper, a pen and his brain the theory of what is called geostationary satellites. And so our satellites are indeed so-called communications satellites. They are at 36 to be precise, 35,650 kilometers from the earth above the equator. And there are approximately 160 such satellites out of which 29 are from my company. When I say my, I'm only the CEO, I don't own the company. Utexat is a European company, very European. Our headquarters are in Paris and we have 27 nationalities in our headquarters. So most European countries nationalities are represented. So if I may, let's imagine, let's imagine that satellite communications for one day stop working. Something happens, okay? I brought here a few figures to share with you about what this would mean. There would be black screens for 27,000 TV channels. 27,000 TV channels. On our own satellites we have more than 4,000 TV channels, just Utexat. There would be no TV at all for over 20% of homes that have TV worldwide. This is more than 350 million homes that have TV only because of through satellites. Hundreds of millions of Africans would have no mobile phones. You have approximately 1 billion people who live in Africa, 500 million mobile phones out of which 60% work because satellites enable them to work. So suddenly there were no satellites, 60% of the 500 million mobile phones in Africa would not work anymore. There would be no coverage obviously of news breaking events across the world in Davos, in China, or anywhere else. There would be no internet connections for several million users. There would be of course no disaster recovery exercise initiatives as the one that Gerardin was describing. So suffice it to say many things would stop happening and that could impact negatively and dramatically the life of hundreds of millions of people. So without being too long, why are satellites important for mankind and why are they important for the coming, why would they be more important in the coming years than in the past years? I believe there are three simple reasons to that. One reason is that people use more and more the internet, there is more and more data flowing from different parts of the world to other parts of the world and you, this flow, increasing flow needs satellites to take part of it because there is an increasing congestion of the flow of data. The second reason, and seeing this in the middle of the Swiss Alps, is that terrestrial technologies cannot go everywhere. Millions and millions of people can only be connected because of satellites. When I was a student, there was a great philosopher called McLuhan who spoke of a global village and the global village then sounded like utopia. Well, the global village now becomes possible, but for some people it requires satellite services. And the third reason that satellites are also fundamentally necessary for the future is that terrestrial technologies like fibers are great technologies, but they make no, it makes no economic sense to use them everywhere. It can be estimated that it takes approximately 10,000 euros to bring fiber to someone who lives far in the country or in the mountains. That is, of course, an absurdly extravagant type of cost, so for millions and millions of people including in Europe and many more in other continents, the satellite is the only rational way to be connected to the rest of the world. So, Ram, this is what I wanted to say this day. Thank you very much, Michel. First of all, I'm very thankful to you that you started a presentation explaining the work done by Arthur C. Clarke. I personally owe a lot of gratitude to him because I did my doctoral degree on his concept of geostation satellite orbit and when I did it back in 83, not ages, people even in the space law discipline were concerned what is this geostation orbit and thanks to his ideas. Now, there's a small similarity between him and me of he was much more intelligent than me that he used his pen and brain. I think that's what I did. I did not have a computer, certainly not internet. So, but I was fascinated, but you gave a very good answer to that and I am fascinated about your figure that 60% of 500 million Africans were not being efficient to use their mobile phone, that you're talking about 300 million people. I think that one data is good enough to justify or explain the benefit of satellite telecommunications, not all other things which you said in that. I think it's and I'm also glad that you have already touched on the second topic. We'll get to do life without satellites. So, that brings us our fourth speaker in debate. Brian Weedon is a technical advisor to the SQIR World Foundation based in the United States. SQIR World Foundation, in my view, is perhaps the most active and competent NGO in the space sector. And Brian, good friend of mine and always privileged to be in his company and I learned a lot from him from two in two areas. One is military background helps me understand the importance of space for military and I will say conflict resolution. And the second is his experience in making very difficult technical terms to be to some less technical person like me or say. Brian, tell us the use of satellites for conflict resolution. How to avoid conflicts, what happens in conflict rises and then we'll come to the others. Brian. Thank you, Ram. Satellites have played a large role in national security for decades. In fact, some of the very first uses of satellites were by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Since then, some of those uses have expanded to being used by other countries and also to perhaps more of a global perspective. For example, we've loaned for a long time in the United States and the Soviet Union of others use satellites to capture imagery of the earth to determine where there are armies and where there are troops and where there are potential forces. Now there are commercial companies that are selling satellite imagery at half a meter resolution, which means the smallest thing you can see in one of the photographs is half a meter in size that can be bought on the open market with a credit card over the Internet. And there are new uses for this data that are being found. One reason one is a data called SentinelSat that gained the headlines last year in its use of data and imagery on what was going on in South Sudan that was being used by NGOs to put pressure on governments for human rights abuses. And they had actual imagery that showed that there were villages being burned and that there were atrocities being committed and that in turn put pressure on governments. That would not have been possible without satellites that were able to take this imagery and be distributed to NGOs and private citizens in the public to then be used for political pressure. And there are going to be more examples of the use of satellite imagery and other satellite data as it gets beyond just governments into the hands of the public and into the hands of NGOs that will be used for the global good. To pick up on a few of the themes that have already been addressed and provide some more specific examples and the case of disaster response. When the earthquake struck Haiti satellites played a major role in the disaster response. Using some of these same commercial satellites they were able to take very high res images of Port de Prince and the areas affected by the earthquake and using tools developed by Google and other software companies to be able to determine exactly which buildings were destroyed, what it looked like before the earthquake and after the earthquake to help rescuers target the places where people were most likely to be found to try and save lives. Back to the issue of navigation systems it turns out that if you have atomic clocks are very useful and that they generate an extremely precise time but they're expensive and they're not very small, at least not yet. Well all of these global positioning system satellites GPS satellites and others have atomic clocks and these signals can be picked up anywhere on earth. So in addition to navigation there are a whole host of other uses that people have found that are very interesting innovative ways to make use of a highly precise timing signal. It was already mentioned coordination of several activities on earth but the banking sector is another one. You have all of these automated electronic banking transactions going on rapid pace, more rapid than humans can detect and in many cases they're using the precise navigation signal from the satellites to calculate and timestamp exactly when these transactions happened to help keep track of when they were and who moved first and who moved last and the values of various goods. There's also multiple fields within scientific research that have opened up because you can now more precisely measure things using these accurate timing signals so research and detect atomic plates and earthquake detection and a whole host of other things have developed. The global shipping network uses a system called AIS which is a device that you can put on a ship that communicates the ship's location and other data up to satellites and they're being used to coordinate global shipping and in some cases to help with navigation through tight spots but also they're being used if there's an accident at sea or if a ship gets lost to help try and locate in a search and rescue and the very last thing I'd like to touch on is something that was mentioned by Ray to begin with and that's something called Near Earth Objects. Near Earth Objects are asteroids that orbit the sun in a very similar orbit to the Earth and we know over the history of the Earth the Earth has been struck many times by these asteroids and they range in sizes from a few small meters that burn up in the atmosphere to hundreds of meters potentially even kilometers that many think may have been wiped out some of the dinosaurs and we know that in the future the Earth will be struck again so part of what we can do with space now is we have potentially some of the tools to be able to prevent this from happening should we in the future detect an asteroid that will be on a collision course with Earth and that would involve various technologies to actually change its orbit so that it doesn't intersect the Earth and that could be a major I mean it's we're at the point where we almost have the tools to save our own species from extinction and that is a pretty revolutionary thing and with that I'll stop. Thank you very much Brian so not only the satellites not only help us live our modern life but also can guarantee our survival maybe can guarantee or help us surviving and that's good we have already touched life without satellites I think we should pursue a little bit further than that of course all the benefits which have been described they will not be available with the satellites are not there so the question before us is really to see what are the threats what are the risks for the utilization of satellite life without satellites in certain way I would like to to ask our panelists to expand a little bit more and that coming again to raise point here is the the benefit of space space has to be skewed how how we can skewer that what are what are the risks involved in that now again anybody can take the floor yeah please well one of the biggest challenges that Ray mentioned is something we call space debris there are approximately a thousand satellites that are currently orbiting the earth that are being used for a variety of purposes but there's a lot of other stuff up there that is essentially the leftovers of our activities in space over the last several decades and collectively these dead satellites and used rocket bodies and small pieces and nuts and bolts are known as space debris there are currently about 21,000 pieces of space debris bigger than 10 centimeters that we know exist and we're tracking we know the locations of them and the scientists that research this know that there's approximately another half million objects down to one centimeter that also exist in orbit and all of these objects are moving around the earth at speeds between seven kilometers a second and four kilometers per second and so if you can imagine a car crash on earth at speeds of you know 100 kilometers with two cars can imagine a car crash between two objects traveling at seven kilometers per second and what's even more significant is that on the earth if you have a car crash well you come by with tow trucks and you pull the cars out of the way and you sweep up the street everything is fine but the way that the physics work with satellites when you have a car crash in space the debris ends up staying in orbit along with all the satellites for a very very long time in 2009 there was a crash between an American and a Russian satellites and there was approximately 2,000 additional pieces of debris created by this collision that are going to be in orbit for decades and of course that means that there are more chances for this debris to impact other objects and cause more clashes which again causes more debris space is vast trillions and trillions of square kilometers but the debris exists in the few areas that we use and so it actually coexists with all of our satellites and the research now shows that we can expect a collision like that to happen on the average of every five to ten years and as more collisions happen we're going to end up with a faster pace of rate of growth of debris thank you very much it is true it is almost a vicious circle because the debris created then lead to more collision to more debris and if we don't do anything the situation will be worse anyway so it is not a question of stopping to create debris at one point it will be a question of how to remove some of the debris I would just like to add something is that this debris issue is mostly concerning what we call the low earth orbit so it's the area between let's say 300 to 1000 kilometers around the earth so it is less of a concern for higher orbits but unfortunately this is also the area where we have the space station you know we have the international space station which is orbiting above our heads it is permanently inhabited by six astronauts Americans Russians Japanese Canadians Europeans and it is frequently now that the space station has to maneuver to avoid debris it is very frequently also that space operators have to maneuver their satellites to avoid them being destroyed to avoid collision and by the way maneuvering the satellites means that you use the fuel and means that the satellites have a lower lifetime so you reduce the lifetime of satellites you are less efficient so for many reasons it is now becoming a really urgent issue to address because we cannot continue like that already all the space agencies and space operators are taking measures that they do not create additional debris for instance when you launch a rocket you make sure that the pieces of the rocket will go down burning through the atmosphere and will not stay in orbit creating more waste and all the space agencies now take care that at least they do not aggravate the situation but I think the problem is now how to decrease the number of space and we are reflecting of a number of solutions technical solutions but there are no real technical solutions operational for the time being thank you so that means if I want to go to space with my wife I have to be very careful yes not only for debris reasons but thank you Brian you mentioned about Michel not on debris because not only for your wife who is sitting here but if I believe anybody it is good to be cautious when you go to space but because you spoke of threats if I may I would like to add a few considerations the first consideration is that we are of course very excited by what we all do it's interesting to remember that the history of mankind with space is a very recent history the Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union less than 55 years ago and 55 years compared to the history of mankind is just one second compared to what mankind has been doing in other fields so we are at the beginning of I believe will be for thousands of years an extraordinary adventure going forward the second comment I want to make is it's good to when we speak of threats it can be quite chilly oh my god I'd like to share two figures with you a communication satellite in 1985 weighed one ton carried seven television channels and lasted for lived for approximately seven years the communications satellite launched in 2012 weighs six tons can live up to 20 years and can serve 1000 television channels okay so in terms of durability of using rare resources this is a huge progress the third comment I want to make is now another threat which is jamming in our life jamming is a serious topic and there are two types of jamming one is voluntary jamming the other one is involuntary voluntary jamming is when a country decides that what some TV channels or radio channels are saying should not be heard by the people of that country this is called censorship okay it is opposed to freedom of information and to be blunt I'll give you one example we carry on our satellites a channel called BBC Farsi BBC Farsi gives news in Farsi language which of course people who live in Iran are particularly interested in and we also carry Deutsche Weller or Voice of America so all these channels what do they do they bring information that people want to hear when they don't want to hear a propaganda and especially if you remember a few years ago it was the 30th anniversary of the revolution and there was a lot of attention then given to Iran and from Iran to news and when these television channels brought news in Farsi language to Iran there was a lot of voluntary jamming to prevent Iranian people from having access to these news and so I just want to say here we are in Davos whose aim is I believe to make the world a better world and I believe that voluntary jamming is bad and it just happens that the Worldwide Conference on Telecommunications has started in Geneva a few days ago they meet from time to time thousands of people I hope that this conference will address this topic and that progress would be made in building a worldwide consensus on the fact that voluntary jamming is acceptable and to finish my comment then there is voluntary jamming that is more difficult to handle because it comes involuntary jamming it comes with of course more the more data there are the more than sometimes indeed there can be some issues and I believe that we all we all we satellite operators but also satellite manufacturers we must do more R&G work to be able to address that topic because as traffic will grow this issue is bound to grow if we don't address it head on and so I think that is one of should be must be one of our common priorities for the years ahead of us thank you Michel I would like to make one comment on Brian's comments about space debris and I mentioned the need for collaboration global collaboration and coordination and space debris is an important area a few years ago the Chinese demonstrated an anti-satellite capability as one of their non-working weather satellites and it created a tremendous amount of space debris and the purpose of the test was to effectively show that they had that capability but the downside is there is a tremendous amount of debris that now the ISS has to move satellites have to move etc etc and across that is very important and also jamming affects GPS as well GPS as we all know was developed for military purposes originally and then as I said a billion devices broadly spread to many civilian uses it's possible that in a conflict it could be jammed tried to be jammed and that could not only affect the military but also affect the civilian use of that so it's a big deal thank you very much you brought that that was my lesson so we have a problem about just one more quick addition to that a perfect example of what Ray was talking about they're starting to move to incorporate GPS into air traffic systems and particularly aircraft landing systems and they were doing some tests in the United States and they discovered that at a certain time every day the GPS signal at the airport would go out and it would come back and it would happen at the same time every day and it really people couldn't figure out what was going on until they discovered that there was a delivery truck that would arrive every morning around the same time and the driver had installed a GPS jammer in the truck because his employer had a GPS tracking device to monitor where he was going and he of course didn't want them to know where he was going and these are things that you can buy off the internet for not a whole lot of money and they're fairly simple to operate but in this case the unintended consequences were that everywhere he was going it was jamming GPS around him in a fairly significant area and so it's not an easy solution to try and prevent some of these problems and some of these problems are I mean obviously he didn't intend to so that's intentional, unintentional jamming well I mean he attended to jam GPS in his truck but he did not intend to jam GPS at the airport that was just a side effect thank you very much that's quite interesting to see that so that means to build a GPS satellite to launch it you need a rocker scientist but to jam it you don't need to be a rocker scientist so that underlines and I'm sure there are other risks I don't know if you want to add anything to more risks I was going to make a comment about the tracking of the debris there are many initiatives now as you mentioned going down to one centimeter and so we're actually involved in a new radar that will help catalog and identify the very small pieces so that we can do a better job of avoidance because of the tremendous damage that can be caused at that speed that's good question of jamming question of censorship question of space debris anti-satellite systems the list can go on and on so that these risks, threats to space utilizations are serious and can make our life more difficult to the point perhaps space might become very difficult to utilize one of the the implication of those risks I would say threat to an industry space industry itself which is about $300 billion industry today which creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in that situation now so what should be done about it what can be done about it I personally like to have very straightforward dating solutions which may not be acceptable to the governments or anybody else because it is you and me who are going to be suffering and I think we should be convinced these steps must be taken to secure the world to secure space for our benefits anybody wants to add Michelle you mentioned few points you want to the question of jamming should it be prohibited and how it could be prohibited and how it could be that prohibition could be implemented so I think the question you are raising is in fact a very broad one or probably all the people in this room are here because they have an interest or even some passion for space matters and they need to be passionate about space it is extraordinary however if we look ahead choices are going to have to be made space investments in satellites, launchers new projects are expensive cost money, Geraldine reminded us of figures across different countries or groups of countries and it is also clear it's been heard in Davos a lot this week that governments have in Europe and the US are going to try to save money because of the deficits and the depth that have been accumulated so choices are going to have to be made we can't just say because it is space we must do it and accumulate projects which then taxpayers will one day say hey why should we do all of this we cannot have taxes go up so that's a general comment in that general comment I would volunteer the following recommendations one recommendation is that when we look at different projects we should look at what they bring to mankind how do they make the life of people better in other words I was brought up in the world of the two blocks when the soviet block and the so called free world block were fighting each other and there was sort of a competition to use the word competition if they do it we'll do it there was the soviet Sputnik and then we'll go to the moon before the soviets etc etc and of course competition and emulation does create progress because people are incented to do better but on the other hand now that great things have been achieved the question remains when we look at all the many projects that can be started and completed in the coming 10 to 20 years which are the ones that should be given and I'm recommending that the key criterion be not the prestige of the states or the countries not the so called sovereignty but what does it bring to mankind to the day to day life of people that's my second comment on that my third comment is that in that context I believe that a very important priority should be 10 or 20 years to come to make sure that every person across the world be connected so the broadband for all so that it's not just for the happy few for one half of humanity or 60% of humanity but I believe it should be a goal that broadband be accessible to people, to everybody except my mother who doesn't want broadband to everybody across the world I say that because I'm French in France you hear a lot about very high broadband and there are goals and talks about that that's great but let's first make sure that everybody has access to broadband before we put too much energy on very high broadband and if I may Ram, I'll finish with the following two comments some topics can, we can make significant progress by just goodwill and strong work and we don't need budgets jamming, voluntary jamming is a good example if this becomes a real important cause for the nations, who are the United Nations and if they make it a priority and jamming is not just only done by Iran, other countries other countries in the western world also do jamming so this is not such an easy topic it will take courage for countries to agree that indeed jamming is not acceptable so I'm just saying this one doesn't need money, taxpayers money it needs courage last comment is that the papers, the newspapers have been in recent weeks about the plans of China in space for the coming five years and just as there was competition between the Soviet Union and the US in space you can see it coming that there will be now some kind of competition between China and the US and I would recommend just as a citizen an approach where China where the big powers US, China European Union Russia, India the five leaders in space instead of saying I want to do better than them but we would work together there is already which is a big progress of the past 10 years collaboration between Russia and the US if you had said that 30 years ago people would have said what collaboration between Russia and the US you would have said no way so I am recommending the same the same between US and China and European Union and Russia and India I believe it is a way to save money and to bring people together and to do great things together thank you very much that ties into what we said to start with international cooperation and collaboration is must I would like to add one thing if I could I think you mentioned President Kennedy's comment about going to the moon by the end of the decade there were many reasons for making that comment and I think it became a clear passionate goal of the United States to achieve that which they did and as I said there are competitive reasons and other reasons and it became a passion in fact if you talk to people working in engineering today especially those who are entering the field then some of them say I started in this business because of the space program I got the passion for my technical field so we are struggling with jobs and we are struggling with STEM education science technology engineering math not just in the United States in fact globally and so there are certain attributes of space and the excitement that it brings but I think where we are today is many nations including the United States are lacking a specific strategic plan for what's next and having moved away from that Cold War conflict to what's next having gone to the moon a long time ago now I think you pointed out several unique attributes let's kind of do a contrast let me contrast the cost of terrestrial landlines in China versus mobile phones it would be impossible to landline wire China or India but look what's happened with the explosion of mobile devices because of these and the affordability with which that can happen I think space offers unique advantages that should be considered I mentioned in my introductory comments systems engineering approach to make actual comparisons between terrestrial systems between space systems see where the advantages lie I'm quite sure the 300 million people in Africa who have mobile access because of space assets are delighted with that ability but it's not just providing broadband it's using broadband for other ways it's thinking about how broadband how space-based connections can produce sustainable business models that can bring food and water and healthcare to rural villages in Africa and India and other places in the world to think more broadly about what space can do where the niche services can be derived from and then all of a sudden the cost-benefit analysis it becomes much easier when you look at it from that systems engineering and strategic planning approach thank you very much we got to stop in three minutes from our side so General Jean you want to talk about European initiative to come up with the code of conduct for skewering space just to bounce back on Apollo the Apollo astronauts said we left to discover the moon and we have discovered the Earth and I think it is true that when you it is this conscious conscience that the Earth is a very small, finite place with limited resources which came from the space program it's a very small place in the big black universe so I think indeed space can help us solve Earth challenges we mentioned energy food, disasters etc and I think indeed we need to have broadband for everyone but first we need to have water and food for everyone I think so for all these reasons space can contribute and honestly for a relatively small cost because we talk about billions of euros or dollars it sounds huge but if you look at what it costs for instance of what it costs to build a highway well it's much more expensive to build a highway than to build a satellite I mean the real budgets of space agencies are actually quite small this being said I think our objective is nowadays we want to share the benefits you mentioned very rightly space started as a dominance tool it was to be better to be leading the other now space is a tool for cooperation it is a tool for peace when you look at the International Space Station it is true you have Russians, Americans Japanese, Europeans, Canadians cooperating and perhaps Chinese in a fairly short term future it is a tool for peace and for collaboration and perhaps it is a tool that can replace if I may say optimistic conflicts instead of fighting each other we can do things together in particular using space and finally there is also one thing we have not mentioned it is a tool for answering questions after all everyone around the earth wonders is there life elsewhere we haven't mentioned it it is a pressing question perhaps not one that needs that requires to invest lots of money is there life elsewhere in the universe and that also I think is a question we must seek to answer thank you very much very quickly on the topic of potential solutions I will just bring up two one is acknowledgement by both governments and companies and everywhere else to operate the space that the space environment is fragile and that the long term sustainability of the space environment should be a priority and that means looking at what you are doing in space with an eye towards is it going to have negative long term impacts on the space environment and the second thing would be norms of behavior it was easy when space first started it was just the union using space there was kind of a gentleman's agreement about what we didn't and didn't do and both sides kind of understood space now there are nearly 60 countries operating at least one satellite and every year there are more countries adding additional satellites and not everyone knows what is responsible behavior and what is irresponsible behavior and so a discussion, a dialogue between all those countries on what are norms of behavior and what is responsible and irresponsible behavior is a much needed step good thank you very much now we have 25 minutes it's your turn anybody have any question the gentleman there listening to the learned gentleman, lady out there I had the impression you were trying to sell us satellites I was feeling like an an advertising action and when I was young I heard the song of the deep purple being the dark side of the moon and the satellite is an artificial moon so there was very little we heard about the dark side of these moons and quite in particular the Orwellian action and concept of global surveillance of intelligence chips implanted into individual citizens losing their freedom and not just vans that the boss want to track down but individuals around the whole world who should be observed now this is something that I think should be mentioned I would very much like to ask the most courageous of you to take up this issue why we were waiting to come in to listen to you we were given a leaflet saying, quoting Orwell saying that in a time of global control and surveillance it is a revolutionary act to speak the truth may I encourage you to be revolutionary thank you very much any person here it's like a war question it's a war question show Michel, thank you Michel taking up this challenge so I don't know your name but I don't pretend to be more courageous I'm sure but I'd like to make two comments one is that speaking for the world I know which is geostationary satellites we are not involved at all in any way in anything that is observation we are in the business of telecommunications not in observation so I very candidly I candidly have no interesting knowledge to share with you on this topic we are not involved in any way in observation the second comment I want to make is to come back to what you said at the beginning you get the impression that we are selling the four of us were invited to attend this panel and we were not invited to sell we were invited to share information and knowledge and debate between ourselves and with you and I believe a key reason for that is that the satellite world is not well known I can tell you I meet senior officials government cabinet members I sometimes ask them we have geostationary satellites they say what so I ask them do you know how high we are and very senior people very famous people tell me 10 kilometers 15 kilometers maybe come on 50 and when I say 36,000 they say ah so the level of knowledge of understanding of what we do is in fact I would say insufficient and I'll give you one concrete example we launched my company launched a satellite in December 2010 which became operational in June 2011 called KASAT it is today the second most powerful satellite in the world and it delivers broadband services across all of Europe North Africa some countries of Central Asia and the Gulf States and we are not we are a B2B company we are not a B2C company for those who don't know this jargon it means we work with companies we don't work with people our clients work with individual people and so this satellite is a fantastic satellite the launch went very well and the services we provide up to 10 megabits to people in broadband who live in places like the Alps or countries or far from cities the service is terrific our main challenge is that about commercial success is that many people don't know that we exist don't know that satellites can provide this kind of services because they believe that I have to confess when I got this invitation I thought I'll come and maybe I can do a little not selling but information thank you Charlie do you want to supplement yes it is true that space is a unique means of gathering information including gathering information of localization and retransmitting it instantaneously and everywhere so it is this which may lead to users some of them are good some of them are bad it's very difficult to discriminate obviously when you have such a powerful technology between the good and the bad users I do believe that there is a notion of ethics at one point that you have to raise we were mentioning debris and the fact that it is up to the space fairing nations to take responsibility we mentioned of conduct for space fairing nations the users that can be made some of them I agree may be unpleasant now if you want to avoid that you should not have a mobile phone I tell you clearly but I think there is a true question of space ethics and I think by the way Davos is not a bad place to reflect on the possible bad users that could be made of technology is neutral technology is not bad or good it's neutral it's the use that you make of it that can be bad and we must reflect on it it's true thank you very much the gentleman the one who is standing excuse me sir my name is Stefan Kleinzorger I'm a business consultant then live in Strasbourg in France business as a head of finance and I'm interested in business ethics today so my question goes into nearly the same direction but a little bit different because my statement is satellites are not democratically supervised and the second statement is space is a free good which should be open to all so don't we need an international framework which forces all nations operating satellites to give a certain portion of their satellites as a free good as well because if I understand the world correctly the for example the US government still can threat the world by switching off GPS for national security reasons and if that would happen we would not have all the goodies you mentioned for the last hour thank you very much I'm not American but I am the space agency person here so I can reply to you on that first of all I don't know about NASA but I know about ESA scientific data from our satellites is free it's open you can have access to it our Earth observation satellites also you can have access to the data so that clearly our goal is to share the data to maximize the services that can be made use using this data that is clearly our goal is to ensure that everyone can use this data for the best possible purposes second point you talk about GPS it is true or at least it was true but there is no monopoly of GPS anymore now GPS is one of the navigation systems available worldwide and the temptation to use a monopoly as a tool obviously disappears once the monopoly is gone because if you have several systems which you can use and by the way which are being made interoperable so there is also the idea to cooperate between these systems it means you cannot do this kind of blackmailing anymore and that is why in particular Europe has its GPS system called Galileo which should be soon available but also China is putting together its GPS or its navigation system Russia so I think it is less the case when space benefits become shared and when more and more nations are developing their systems it makes it more available to everyone but this being said when you say I'm challenged by your statement that space is not democratic I think maybe space building satellites if you wish is the privilege of rich nations but having access to space data is democratic because as I said at least our satellites you can have free access to it thank you Michel I'd like to take two stabs at the your very strong statement that satellites are not democratically supervised in my world the telecoms satellites world we have in fact two kinds of supervision as a European company we are there was a legislation called something like television without borders European legislation of 20 years ago which organized the fact that satellite operator based in Europe has to be supervised is supervised by the national body of the country where that company is based so in our case we are based in France and there is a regulatory body called CSA CSA Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel Superior Counsel of Audiovisual they are independent people and what they do is in our world they observe content we do not observe content okay we don't when a customer comes we don't say well we don't like what you your show and so we're not going to take you as a customer but CSA does that and if there is something illegal in what the channel does we have the legal right to write to us and to say we ask you to stop serving this channel I'll give you an example a few years ago I got such a letter we received such a letter from CSA about a channel that was working very closely with Hamas and the order we got from CSA is that that channel was being violently anti-semitic saying things like we must finish the work that Hitler did not finish so we got the order and we immediately obeyed and we stopped serving that channel but the point I'm trying to make to you which may shock some of you is that we don't try to judge ourselves the content because we are company mostly engineers our job is to make satellites work and legally if we start saying yeah we like those guys we don't like those guys etc then where would that go and so we respect the law and the law says that it is the supervisors who are in the case of France and in the case I believe of all other European countries who are pointed by elected officials to do exactly that job and the representatives of the people who then have the right to give us orders this is about national supervision then there is a second field which is let's say global supervision our global supervisor is ITU International Telecommunications Union this is a United Nations agency based in Geneva as I told you this week and they have been appointed created by the United Nations and the member states of the United Nations to try and supervise what we do and I will tell you that task is very difficult and coming back to your statement about I read it again satellites are not democratically supervised what does it mean democratically supervised what does it mean this is a real debate let's give this agency of the United Nations teeth so that they can give orders give member states orders do this don't do that and other people say hey those are just experts how can they give orders to countries where you have elected officials by the people so where is democracy is democracy in this universal United Nations appointed body to the elected officials of country per country I believe it's a combination of the two I just want to say that the notion of what is democratic is not so simple to define but we are supervised we are good thank you good thank you gentlemen there please yes it's very interesting but I have the impression that I've heard this all before if I think about the nuclear power industry there was also a very steep development curve and today we are looking at putting an end to nuclear power because the issue of atomic waste was simply pushed aside and now it's kind of leading to the end of nuclear power we might find ourselves in a similar situation with space exploration because of the space problems which you've mentioned very interesting question thank you very much please Brian that is an interesting question although I would caution to say that when we talk about space debris and the risk of collision for those of you who have seen the Pixar movie Wally there's a scene where he's escaping orbit and gets hit by a satellite that is the Hollywood movie of this it will not be at a point where there is a blanket of debris around the earth that's outside the laws of physics what is the case is that the density of debris will increase to the point where it will become more expensive to have a satellite in certain locations in orbit and that may make certain missions and certain operations not cost effective but as far as preventing exploration that is probably not the case because we're talking today we've been talking about space debris in the orbit around the earth exploration we're talking about sending people away from the earth to the moon the Mars, asteroids and other bodies and in that case you're just kind of passing through it was mentioned that there is a particular risk to the International Space Station and in the future we might look at having other laboratories space stations and other activities in orbit and that is definitely a concern although the saving grace is that happens at a low enough altitude approximately 400 kilometers or so that the earth's atmosphere of course doesn't just stop it goes off for quite a ways it just gets thinner and thinner and at that altitude debris and objects in space only stay there for weeks to a couple of months before they get pulled into the atmosphere so there is a self cleaning mechanism that does help protect the lower portions of space which is where human activity and human space flight will take place the real risk is more to the robotic satellites that operate up at the higher regions thank you very much you assured me that I can take my wife to low earth orbit right not the earth sure thank you gentlemen there please thank you actually a successful attempt now do you know is that the only attack on a satellite up to now and how many additional debris were created another thing would it be possible by the united nations to give pressure on all the nations not to do such things again good question very good question I believe was what were the number of debris pieces that were created by the ASAT do you know the answer about 3,000 pieces larger than 10 centimeters and tens of thousands smaller than that 10 centimeter pieces destroy a satellite if they could right so 3,000 pieces large enough to destroy a satellite in terms of the international pressure other people may have a better view of this than I do I think probably the awareness of the impact of doing that was brought to international light in a way that hadn't been done before and I think that that awareness has created more pressure on all nations of the world not to do those kinds of things but I'm not aware of any particular international or UN recommendation sanctions or anything else like that that have to do with space to break Brian again you may know there were several countries that brought pressure on China after this test most were done privately I believe it was only Japan that publicly brought up the issue there was a significant amount of discussion about this issue in several different united nations bodies and interestingly the Chinese tested the same system 3 years later in 2010 only they did it in a way that created no debris so one can infer that a lesson was learned and whether or not it was the diplomatic pressure or other ways but they did not repeat what they did they want to use leo too exactly they have satellites and they are investing heavily in building satellites and building constellations for all the same benefits that everyone else is using and they have had to maneuver a couple of their satellites to avoid pieces of debris from their own anti-satellite test so I believe that unfortunately it was a bad thing to happen but I think there has been a lot learned from it and you probably will not see something similar in the near future so thank you we have time for one short question just a general ethical question speaker spoke about jamming and the difference between voluntary and involuntary jamming and how that was bad and how that senses free speech around the world but then also spoke about how western nations such as France itself censoring his company satellites do you think there should be some sort of overarching standard on should hate speech or offensive speech be censored or do you think that all speech should be allowed to be free and regardless of the costs and if so how does that play in with the idea that jamming voluntary or involuntary is good or bad good, gotcha you know I get every week I told you we have 4,000 television channels on our satellites every week I get letters or phone calls from states accusing some television channels that we are serving to be terrorists the definition of terrorists that some states use is probably different from the one you would use or I would use some states consider that any channel that is criticizing them as a terrorist so the point I'm trying to make is that you speak of hate speech what is hate speech your definition may be different from the definition of someone else so that's why that's how democracy works that this has to be legislation and the legislation then says what is indeed acceptable or unacceptable and then it says who will be the judge about that and what is I believe good is that in Europe we satellite operators we are considered as not having the right legitimacy to decide this is hate speech unacceptable this is not hate speech acceptable and so I think that's the way it should be that at the end of the day it's the people's representatives who need to vote the appropriate legislation after the appropriate debates like the debates that take place in Davos or in many other places and I'm just cautioning you on the fact that when people are emotional they may decide that something is acceptable and then what becomes acceptable may shrink and shrink and shrink so it is good that there are some wise people who are the regulatory bodies who at the end of the day make these decisions I do want to add that I must have been unclear I did not say that France was jamming I said that the channels that we are carrying I mentioned 3 BBC Farsi Deutsche Welle Voice of America have been jammed the source of the jamming was clearly Iran that's what I said thank you very much no we must stop here and I have 3 conclusions I picked up from the discussion and presentations and my conclusions are I hope you will agree with me is that satellites are indispensable for modern society and industry second is there are risks some are serious risks to the sustainable use of satellites for the benefit of all and the last is international cooperation and collaboration is imperative to mitigate these risks enhance the benefits of space which also includes for maintaining or achieving peace on earth with that we conclude our session but before I would like you to thank our panelists thank you very much thank you very much for your very good audience thank you very much thank you alright thank you very much thank you very much wonderful wonderful thank you thank you