 So welcome everyone to this great debate title is thrills and dangers of extending human impact beyond our planetary boundaries, but I think you can, if you want, or at least I'll translate that to to an alternative title, which is loosely the benefits and risks of space exploration and exploitation. And we've got four really super speakers today to in person and to virtually and I'll introduce them in just a second, but I'll very briefly introduce myself. My name is Jonathan Bamber. I'm going to moderate the session. I'm a former president of the EU. But actually, I think the main reason I'm here is because I'm a space scientist myself, mainly working Earth observation work very closely with the European Space Agency, but also NASA. But great years actually I was in an astronomy department as well so I kind of, you know, been around the block in terms of space activities and I don't know I've been to the dark side and back again if you like so. So I have some background in the field if you like. And now I'll introduce my four speakers and the way we're going to run this session is that each speaker is going to that very complimentary background and expertise and you'll see that in a minute. Each speaker is going to have around about 10 minutes with a few slides to introduce their perspective on this problem and this topic. And then after that I'm going to tease them with a few directed questions, and then we're going to open it up to the floor. This is a great space and we very, very much want interaction from the audience and for you to input your thoughts and comments and, you know, put the speakers on the spot with some real questions because that's what it's all about. Okay, so don't be shy. And there'll be plenty of times that we've got to think about an hour and 45 minutes so we really do want input from all of you. So, in no particular order. Our first speakers are Dr Alfredo Carpignetti, who is an astrophysicist and science journalist with many years of experience and one of our in person speakers. Dr Mikella Musilova, who I know very well from many years back she did her PhD in my group. I don't know we won't discuss when that was but it was some years ago now. She's an astrobiologist and analogue astronaut, based at her own not for profit company called Extreme Frontiers previously. And she's online. Next in person speaker is Dr Anna Maria Trofea, who is a crowd crisis for scientists working for the European Space Agency in their climate office which is based in how well in the UK. And finally, our last online speaker is Dr Andrew Williams, who is head of external relations and in the executive office of the director general of the European Southern Observatory. So each of those speakers has a very different, possibly even unique perspective on this. Some of the challenging questions that we're going to address today. Let's start with Alfredo, do you want to kick off with your, your pitch and we'll go around the forum and then open up questions. Hello everyone, I'm Alfredo and my pronouns are him and my pitch for the debate is about some of the failures of communication in space sciences. I thought that we were going to discuss some of the positive but if you need to kick up a debate, I wanted to challenge you and be a bit critical about space sciences. What does the public see space and space exploration. We have been in a way sold the idea of collaboration in peace from the true collaboration in terms of international mission to this idea that the US landing on the moon was for all mankind. We always talk about humanity discovering big things in space, we tend to ignore who paid for the telescopes the mission, etc. Obviously, ISS Hubble, so many missions, embodied that ideal, and also the media, in fact, I'll go to Star Trek has this idea that is aspirational that this is what is going to be like. And in fact, I have a T shirt that says fully automated luxury luxury space communism, which is Star Trek. Whenever we discuss the future of space exploration, we think of something like Star Trek, a place that has no money, a place that this individual going out in the galaxy to explore to do science. At the same time, the public see also certain negative aspect, I hear a lot that mission are a waste of money, like we are taking bags of cash and tossing them into space. There is obviously the concern that space can becomes a theater war. And there's also the stuff about competition. We hear a lot about, I don't know, the moon, the moon race, the new moon race, which China there is discussed as something that is almost almost aspirational when it's not a lot of people are concerned about space to become something that is more complex, more political, although it is political despite what we might think that is this big vast ocean of peace. What's not communicated about space is the space is ultimately undemocratic, not every country in the world is takes part in the decision that affects all of us. And I will have a couple of case studies about this very quickly. There is a lack of regulation. It is not as regular as it should be. We are not investigating the role of Western colonialism in how we think about space from the language that we said that we want to colonize Mars, we want to have colonies on the moon, but also expectation and action on how we behave when it comes to space and space exploration. There is a dismissal of risk. We have seen all this discussion, for example, about going to Mars without discussing that deep space beyond the protective shell of the geomagnetic field of the planet is very dangerous. Space is going to take those risks. There is a dismissal of space, a soft diplomacy, space is used as a way to push certain agendas around the world, and we need to discuss those. And there is a certain innocence ability and inequality in space that we only now seeing some changes, but we keep getting told that space and science are for everyone. And I'm going to give you two couple of quick case studies about this. In Starlink, Starship and Musk, SpaceX megaconstellation has massively increased the amount of satellites in lower orbits. By 2030, five out of six satellites around the planet will be Starlink, five out of six. And they are affecting the brightness of the night sky. And this is a decision that cannot be relied on a single person or a single country because is affecting everyone on the planet. And we have Starship. We want to be excited because it's the only way to bring humans back to the moon. The first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That's what NASA has been telling us. And the launch that did not successfully concluded last week at spread pollution for more than across radius more than six mile including a town. So who's in charge of that why one person can literally do whatever it wants. One of the most fascist is massive anti-vax and transfer, and even threaten Starlink to become the version of the invasion of Ukraine, because it threatened to remove Starlink after it offered Starlink into Ukraine. This is one of the case study of who does space science and how we communicate in space science. The other case study is JWC. This is James Webb. The name was decided in 2002. In 2015, it comes to light that James Webb played some major role in the Lavender Scare, which is the summary firing of homosexual, real or alleged in the State Department. This is something that moved before Webb moved to NASA. In between 2015 and 2021, there's more finding comes out. This guy for Norton was fired in 1963 when Webb was the administrator of NASA, because he was gay, despite the wish of his manager because he was a very good employer, but custom in the agency was that it would be fired because he was gay. Webb also in the 1970s wrote an essay called Women Can't Fight, saying that he disagreed with women being in the military because they were inferior to men. In June 2021, NASA promised to have an investigation in James Webb. In October 2021, NASA decided to stick with the name. I was one of the journalists they email saying that they found nothing, so they were not going to produce a report. March 2022, nature asked for freedom of information, and the fundouts will see in the next slide exactly what involvement that Webb had in the Lavender Scare. On November 18, 2022, NASA published a report saying there was no evidence that Webb directly fired individual for a sexual orientation. November 18, if you don't know, is the International Day of LGBTQIA plus people in STEM, which could be a complete random coincidence NASA picked that day, or is the fact that they did not care enough about the community. And this is part of the email that came out. The Webb play a leadership position in Lavender Scare is undeniable. The only thing left up to historical debate is the matter of whether or not his art was in it. Was Webb, Webb emotionally invested in the persecution of LGBTQ people, or was he simply tried to save face by spreading homophobia and doubling down on the firings, following the public revelation of firings that happened without probable cause. Either way, one thing is clear, it still did those things. So my controversial point I want to put to you is there is now in space a $10 billion monument to somebody that's hated people like me. And why are we not challenging these ideas that space is for everyone when we know there is plenty of example in which space is not for everyone. The challenges that we see the issue are not just on the scientists are not just on the administrator are also on journalists communicator like myself, but in a way we like to act like we are authorities we know the stuff and we are always right. We are experts, we're there to provide knowledge to educate and to give the advice to understand what's the, what the world should be like but at the end of the day we are just giving advice, and we need to provide education for the people for the democratic process to act on how to take those challenges and how to make the case for space science. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks so much for that Alfredo. As ever with these great debates there are many many different aspects to you know the problem the issue that we're looking at and Alfredo touched on quite a few different ones, which actually aren't just related to space. It's about the humanity and how we interact with each other and the rest of the planet so I don't know this debate could probably extend for days if we really wanted to but anyway, let's let's move on to the next speaker who is going to be providing her case online and I'll hand over to everyone. It's great to be here today let me just get my slides up and running. Hopefully you can see them just fine but someone shout please if you don't. So yeah today I would like to talk to you about astrobiology and simulated space missions and then how you know that plays into the topic we're talking about today. This is already I can tell you there's going to be a bit of overlap with what Alfredo was saying, but I'll leave that for later. So, further ado, let's hope these slides work with me there we go. So first of all what is astrobiology. It is the search for life in space but also trying to understand how life came to be on earth so basically we're trying to address different important questions like where did life come from that it come on an asteroid hit the earth and where did it come from? And was it related to brew and eventually life evolved from it that it originated directly here on earth there's there's lots of different theories and possibilities. We're also trying to find out what is the future of life beyond earth will we be able to live like civilizations for example in this picture might see here in my slide on Mars or elsewhere, and also we're trying to find out whether we are alone. in the universe or whether there is some kind of other life out there. Here's a couple of sci-fi examples in the pictures for you. And one part of astrobiology is looking at the limits of life on Earth. We're trying to understand to what extent life can survive different temperatures, pressures, and other extreme conditions. And that way, once we kind of map that out to a certain degree, we can see whether there are similar conditions on Mars or on icy moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and elsewhere in the universe. So here are just some examples of when I was actually at the University of Bristol, did some research in Greenland trying to understand what can survive on the surface of glaciers, how they can survive, and again, what are the parallels with looking for life somewhere else in space. And analog missions is kind of where astrobiology and simulated missions kind of come together because humans are not only going to extreme environments like I did when I went to Greenland to study life there, but actually humans are making themselves live in extreme conditions to prepare for a potential life beyond Earth. And so here, if you look at this picture, while it may seem like it's another science fiction picture that I'm sharing with you, it is actually a picture of people, the little blue dots at the bottom of the image on the volcano Mauna Loa in Hawaii. And you're looking at the research station High Seas. I used to be the director of High Seas until last year. And this facility is one of several around the world where people are trying to recreate conditions of what it would be like for the first people to live on the Moon or Mars. So in this case, people will be living mostly in that dome structure you see in the picture, energy would be coming mostly from solar panels, and there's some other adjacent buildings for life support and other things necessary to survive. And this is just a brief picture of what it would be like inside. So it may seem spacious. It is actually pretty small in there while everyone has their workstation. That same room is also used for exercising. So you might be working on your important research project. There's going to be someone doing jumping jacks or something behind you. You can smell their sweat. You can hear them. There's no escape. And that's why people chosen for these simulated missions actually need to be very tolerant patient people who can kind of injure these more uncomfortable conditions. It can also be a happy place. For example, you may notice in the middle of the picture, there's something that resembles a Christmas tree is actually a device for growing plants in a hydroponic system. But we were there over Christmas and we also decorated it in a kind of, you know, human way to make us feel happier despite being away from our loved ones over the holidays. And so just to give you an idea, people live in this kind of space from several weeks up to a year. There's a communication delay imposed on communications. When it comes to a lunar simulation, it's only a several second delay with Martian missions is up to 20 minutes each way. That means even in a critical situation, it would take at least 40 minutes to get some help from Earth. And the communications go from Mission Control Center. That's also on the island of Hawaii and there's support people all around the world that are volunteers that help. The analog astronauts is what we call them. They eat kind of astronaut like freeze dried food. They live with limited rations of water and other things. And so we're trying to recreate to the best possible degree within budgets and all these things what the, you know, life would be like beyond Earth with all the restrictions and everything to kind of figure out what the main challenges would be of these missions and how to prepare for them best, both practically but also psychologically. And in the picture on the right, you can see me for scale and one of the bedrooms that's upstairs there, the blue doors you see in the main image can see it's pretty crammed in there. So being able to work with isolation and all these restrictions is an important part of the research that we do there. And to go outside, we have to wear these simulated spacesuits. You can see me for scale standing above a lava cave or lava tunnel or lava tube as we call it in Hawaii. These tunnels form during eruptions of volcanoes in this case Mauna Loa. And they're very interesting from both an astrobiology perspective, but also from the perspective of human settlements beyond Earth, because we know that such structures probably exist on the Moon and Mars. On Mars, we're still hoping to find some life in these lava tunnels. But they're also, as you can see, pretty spacious and could potentially be a locations for humans to build the first settlements and protected naturally underground from radiation and other dangers on the surfaces of these planetary bodies. But when we do this kind of research in the spacesuit going into lava tubes is kind of where there is that crossover of astrobiology and the simulated slash real missions in the future, because we're in spacesuits trying to do research. And I actually had a collaboration with NASA Goddard looking at what extreme life forms can survive in these lava tubes again to see whether something similar could potentially live on Mars today. But wearing this simulated suit, it was just almost impossible to work in a sterile environment as a part biologist. You know, you want to make sure everything's clean so you get these pristine samples and do all the analyses you want. But now you're wearing this clunky suit and it's really difficult to pull latex gloves and everything's on top of these bulky spacesuit gloves and the rest. So by doing this kind of research, we're realizing, oh, wow, sending humans to Mars to do biology research would actually be pretty risky. And I wouldn't really comply with current planetary protection regulations. So if you're not familiar with that term, planetary protection is a way to try and on one hand prevent forward contamination. So we don't want to spread our what don't quote germs or microbes from Earth to other planetary bodies so that, you know, when we're looking for life there, we're actually going to find something that is originally from that location, not something that we brought there ourselves. But we're also trying to prevent backward contamination. So we don't want to accidentally bring something to Earth that we didn't plan for or don't know how to handle. And then as you might know from different dystopian movies that would then spread to some kind of terrible pandemic or something here on Earth. So the way things are going, there's a certain race against time for astrobiologists because the safest way to look for life beyond Earth is actually for robots and things to make sure we minimize contamination. Though by sending humans, it would be more effective. But with commercial companies that are trying to send humans, say to Mars, all those protocols may not be regarded. And then it really will be a miracle if we actually find something on Mars that has not been contaminated. So that's one of the issues we're kind of facing with in terms of astrobiology and these feature space missions. Here again, some other examples of us exploring these lava tubes. In the left hand picture, you can see different kind of microbial growth in the lava tubes. And that's partially what we're trying to study. And on the right hand side, you can see some of the lava tubes are very big and you can actually walk through them. But again, that whole planetary protection issue becomes a big question. Also, this is a little bit related to what Alfredo was saying, when it comes to space agencies versus private companies doing space exploration, because there are these planetary protocols, planetary protection protocols and different treaties in place and some have been in place since the 60s. But unfortunately, they're not always being respected actually many times. They are disregarded and there've been many cases of people sending cars into space or landers crashing on the surface of moon. And then later turns out there was a biological component in that lander, which may have contaminated the lunar surface. But the main problem is that the policies are not being regarded. People are able to sneak things quote unquote into space. And now we're touching upon again that issue of colonization and basically people with power and money doing essentially whatever they want, despite what maybe internationally groups of people want and have agreed upon. And then one more issue I'll raise briefly is related to human settlements beyond Earth. It's the importance of the diversity also something Alfredo mentioned, because what I found when I was running high seas, I ran over 40 similar admissions to the Moon and Mars. I myself have been the commander of over 30 such missions. And I found that the most important thing was to have a very diverse crew. The more diverse the crew was, the more we got along. Because we always had something new to learn from one another. People brought different perspectives which helped us problem solve when we faced different challenges during the missions. And really it just made us bond better and become a sort of space family, which also meant that we could deal with all these problems with care and understanding for each other, lots of empathy. And that's what made for successful missions. But again, with the way things are going at the moment, and if it is going to be just those with power and money that get to choose who gets to go to space to go on these space missions, then diversity is probably going to be disregarded in many ways that it has been so far. And so really we need to think about also things like who's going to be in charge of this? Who's going to regulate who goes to Mars or not? How is government's going to be treated? Ethics? Ownership? Again, we want to avoid colonialism. But how are we going to make that happen? So just to finish up, are we ready to go to Mars? I would say there's still a lot of work we have to do and make sure this will be really a fair place for everyone. And that we're also going to be respectful to science and treaties and all these things that are in place. But there's still a lot of work we have to do together to make sure that when we do go to Mars, it will be really for the benefit of everyone on Earth. So thank you for your attention here. My contact details if you'd like to get in touch after the session. And I'm happy to answer your questions after one has presented. Thanks very much for that perspective, Michaela. So very different from first speaker. And I think we are inquisitive and an exploratory species. In fact, I think I would say we're programmed to be exploratory and we will have a fascination with what's out there. So I think that's a kind of different view about what we can do in the space sector. And we're going to hear a slightly different view again from Anna Maria now from the European Space Agency. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. I'm Anna Maria. And thank you to both speakers who went before me. My presentation is going to be quite different. And for disclaimer at the beginning, I'm standing in for my colleague, Klaus Tiena, who is actually an ESA mission manager. So he has quite a different job. And all those who wanted to hear him speak, I'm afraid you'll have to do that at another moment. I work for the European Space Agency's climate office. And I work downstream in the data exploitation, whereas Klaus would have worked with the satellites. Basically, he takes over the satellites once they go into the scientific exploitation phase. Now, let's see, how do I do this? Klaus would have probably started with one of these slides. Actually, before I continue, can I just see a show of hands? We're here at EGU and there are so many different scientists in this conference. I was just wondering if I could see a show of hands of all the scientists in this room who have used Earth observation data before. Okay. Oh, loads. You've all seen this before. So I'm still going to talk about it. So this is Europe's Earth observation fleet, as it was in the past and how it will be in the future. And for those of you who don't know, we have these three branches of Earth observation satellites. We've got the meteorology satellites, which ESA develops, builds, and then we hand them over to our sister organization, the Humetsat, which is basically the organization of all the institutes in Europe that then operate these satellites. And then we have the second branch, which is probably satellites you all are very much aware of, which are the Copernicus satellites, which we design and build and operate on behalf of the European Commission. And in fact, this Copernicus program goes way back into the 90s when we started talking to the European Commission about how we could establish a systematic observation system from space. Because basically what we didn't have back in the day was what we had in the Met side of things, where you send up missions and you replace them one after another. Before then, in the 1990s, we had satellites. Our first satellite is ERS-1, but there was no plan for systematic observations. So we started talking to the European Commission about how one could go about that, and the result is the Copernicus program. The third branch are the science missions, as we call them, the Earth explorers. And this is ESA's core satellite ability. So these are actually missions that we develop to test out new technology in space. So it's sort of pushing the frontiers of science. And in fact, there are good examples where some of the technology that we've tested has then been transferred to the design of certain Copernicus missions. For instance, the Chrysat II radar altimeter is absolutely unique design. We're going to have a follow-on called Crystal in the future, but actually one of its interesting designs, the way it was built, has also been taken over for Sentinel-6 microfreilich. So this is about the satellites that we have. Now, I actually work downstream, as I said, in trying to develop climate data records from space. And I guess I'll start by saying that, you know, like you, I'm a scientist and interested in better understanding the Earth system. I'm a Chrysler scientist, so I'm interested in understanding the rates of change that are happening in the cryosphere and how these interact with our climate system. But to be able to say something about that, we need good data. And for climate, we need long data records, and we need systematic observations. So that was actually recognised by the global climate observing system, which is an international body under the auspices of WMO, the World Meteorological Organization. And they sort of sat down and decided which the parameters would be that we need to monitor to be able to characterise our climate and its change. And just for context, oops, sorry, I've got a timeline here. So it actually all goes back to the 1990s again with the UNFCCCC's Rio conference, where it was established that we needed these systematic observations. And then GICOS went about and determining which ones we actually really, really need to monitor. And there are 55s that they establish and we think that we can monitor 36 from space. But to be openly frank about this, it wasn't until 2007 that the space agencies realised they weren't really doing enough to support this effort. Because what you really need is long term consistent, unbiased, error characterised data sets. And these didn't exist in the way you would assume they would. And so we kicked off this initiative, the Climate Change Initiative programme, which is actually the programme that we are running at the ESA Climate Office in the UK. And we were really successful with our new climate programme at the last ministerial conference last year. So that's for the future, I'll talk about that in a bit. But it's all about developing the algorithms to be able to create long term data sets from space. So just an example here of ECV. So one of the ECVs identified by GICOS, CIS. And this is taken from a paper by LaVanne Kearn et al. And you can see they've named the ECVs because they're actually arguing with GICOS that climate data records should be split into separate ECVs. But at the moment, the terminology is that CIS is the ECV. And then you have the climate data records that are CIS concentration, CIS thickness, snow on CIS, CIS surface albedo, ice of temperature, CIS age, CIS drift, those are climate data records as we call them. And each of these records needs certain input data from satellites, all different types, not just multi-mission but multi-sensor. And you see the input data on the left column. And then at the bottom on the right, you see the different types of satellites that can be used and the time periods that they've been operating in space. And then the timelines of the data products that already exist. So I think it's probably quite clear that it's not that straightforward. And in fact, okay, so most of you have worked with EO, but I sometimes talk to people who haven't worked with EO at all. And they sort of think you send up a satellite, you download the data, you do some calculations and hey, you've got your climate analysis. It's not how it works at all. You've got to do a lot of research and development before you can even get to a product that is useful to do a climate analysis. Because you have to really make sure that you remove any kind of full signal. You know, there's so many missions, you can't just combine them, concatenate them into one data set. It takes a lot of time, effort, money. And that's basically what we do at the climate office. And this is just an example for what happens when you improve the algorithms. So it's not just, you know, we do our work, but we have to continuously revisit it because you know, the quality of the data set and the trustworthiness of the data set are really important. So this is an example from the CCI Plus Snow project and colleagues in Canada and Finland published this paper. I'm not going to go into details of the paper, but basically, just to make this graph comprehensible to you, they're looking at the satellite derived snowboard equivalent product and they're comparing it to snow cross data. So it's a validation exercise. And what you would expect is that every cycle, you revisit your algorithm and make the changes that you would have a higher correlation. And indeed, we see that. Now, in fact, what they also saw after they improved the algorithm was that the data told you a different story. We actually had a shift in the peak snow mass by two weeks in the season, which can be quite important. So trustworthiness and quality of your data set is so, so important. And that's why continued R&D in this type of data set is also a real necessity. Because ultimately, we want to be able to do science with this. Yes. So this is all about building data sets, but data sets to be analyzed. And here's an example of some of the successful science that we've been contributing to. So this, some of you might know, is the ESA NASA ice sheet mass balance into comparison exercise and quite a few of our data products feed into this. And with this type of information, we can actually better understand where we are in terms of my ice loss to the ocean and track how this is developing and also better constrain the models for the future. So basically, this is me. If there's one thing you want to take away from this presentation, then let it be this. Satellite derived climate data records provide this crucial evidence of global climate change. And it really is important to revisit the historic data sets, reprocess them, homogenize them into a consistent climate data record, because without that, we won't be able to understand what the state of our climate system is. Thank you very much. Thanks, Anna Maria. So Anna Maria made a very impelling case for how important it is to take the pulsing planet with satellite data. And it looked like most of you actually have worked with the EOData. So you probably know that already. But each one of those satellites that Anna Maria had on a second slide cost something like 400 to 500 million euros to put into space. And the space sector is extremely carbon intensive. And so there are balances and trade offs and, you know, no easy wins in this field. So I'm sure we'll touch on those topics shortly. Our last speaker is Andy Williams. He's online and he's from the European Southern Observatory. And I'll hand over to you now, Andy. Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I am sorry that I could not join you in person there. So just give me a moment while I share my screen. Okay, so as Jonathan said, I'm coming from the European Southern Observatory, which is an intergovernmental organization for ground based astronomy. We have 16 European member states and we operate a suite of world leading astronomical telescopes in the Atacama Desert in Chile. And we're currently building what's going to be the world's largest ground based optical and infrared telescope called the Extremely Large Telescope. In addition to my role at ESO, I'm also a representative of the organization at the UN Space Committee, the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, where I'm advocating for astronomy as a space activity. And I'm also leading the policy hub of a new center, which has been established by the International Astronomical Union, which has been set up to protect the dark and quiet skies from increasing interferences from satellites. So the context here, we are entering a new space economy. The technology is improving. The satellite manufacturing costs are going down. The launch costs are reducing. It's never been easier to access space. And this is leading to many benefits, as we've just seen in the last presentation. So many benefits to humanity, the ability to communicate globally, to connect machines together more efficiently with internet. And the huge value that's coming from the field of Earth observation in all that it does for weather and for climate modeling and understanding, and that's something that's really important. But we have to recognize that overall, as a sector, there is an increasing number of objects in space, and in particular in low Earth orbit. So you can see the numbers on the charts here from the European Space Agency. This is the ESA space environment reports that they do every year. And just in the past couple of years, there's been a huge increase in the number of payloads launched into low Earth orbit. And as it was said in the first presentation, you know, this is driven by private companies. And when we add up, the numbers of satellites expected just in the next 10 years, this is based on operator and national filings to the International Telecommunications Union, we reach a very high number of satellites, so of the order of half a million. Now, it's not clear that all those are actually going to happen due to commercial reasons or other reasons, but I mean, that's that's what's been submitted to the regulatory agency. So it's a very, very large number. And just for context, at the present time, there are about eight or so thousand satellites in low Earth orbit. And it's not just satellites that we're talking about. So, you know, that's that's the next decade. But after that, after that, we could see some more, let's say novel uses of low Earth orbit. So there's now concepts for space based solar power provision for military space center networks, for commercial space stations, the cell phone towers in space that can talk directly to your cell phone, and, you know, even space based advertising. And some of these are more realistic than others, but they are all, you know, actually in development at various stages right now. So it's the, these are having many benefits, as I've said, but this growth in the number of satellites is causing some issues. And that's, and that's what I would like to talk about today. And so the increasing numbers of satellites, this is leading to higher number of spacecraft failures to spacecraft breaking up. There's a increasing amount of space debris that's appearing low Earth orbit. And this is causing the space operators to now have to think about how to deal with conjunctions. So either conjunctions between satellites or conjunctions between satellites and space debris, they're having to make agreements bilaterally, private company to private company, okay, what's the procedure for when we have to maneuver in space? How do we deal with that? So this is something that's quite new. They're having to buy into a whole new industry which is emerging on space situational awareness. Because there's no equivalent of the international civil aviation organization that sets standards for air traffic management control. So there's a big private sector which is emerging to fill this gap. And this is creating now questions about, well, how do we, how do we manage risk? What do we deal with in insurance? You know, who is liable? So the changing space environments. And this is the point is, is affecting overall the direction and the way in which we operate in low Earth orbit. And it's not just what's going on in low Earth orbit, it's also having unintended impacts on Earth. And, you know, there are, there are other concerns being raised. So here's, here's just a snapshot of recent headlines from the science news. So, you know, concerns about pollution from the increasing number of satellites burning up in the atmosphere. So is that going to have an environmental effect on the atmosphere? Several tons of aluminium being deposited at high levels, well, we don't really know. And then the fact that the higher number of satellites is leading to the increased risk of small particles traveling at high speed and actually reaching Earth, striking an airplane or striking a person or a populated area. So this is a new type of risk that we have to deal with. And then from my own field, this is the field of astronomy, we are concerned about the impact that the increasing number of satellites is going to have on astronomy. So it's going to be interfering with observations more and more from the ground, but also from space. So on the right here, you see an image from the Hubble Space Telescope that was contaminated by a starlink satellite passing about 80 kilometres below it. And this is going to be happening more and more often. Now, satellite companies are actually working with us to try and reduce the brightness of satellites and share data. But from the perspective of professional astronomy, irrespective of any action they take, they're all going to be detectable by any professional telescope. Now, astronomers, you know, we are using the space environment. We are looking through low Earth orbit into space. So we care about the space environment, particularly in low Earth orbit. And when we look at the first article of the Outer Space Treaty, so this is the set of international law which governs outer space, it was created mainly back in the 60s. We see that there is a recognition that exploration of space is for all of humankind. It's free for exploration. There shall be freedom of scientific investigation. So we can find a rationale for doing astronomy in the foundation of international space law. So that's good. And we also find a basis that all users of space should be given access. So all these satellite operators and private companies, they can still draw their rationale and their legitimacy from the foundation of international space law. But the main question is how is this actually implemented in a form of governance? And that's what I want to end with this short little talk. So some questions that we have. Despite all the benefits that we have, how do we deal with the aggregate effects where individual actions of operators and countries have a large global impact? Is space an environment? So under current legal systems, it's not actually treated legally as an environment right now. Now one of the core principles of environmental law here on earth, at least in Europe, is that the polluter should be responsible for the damage to the environment. So how could that work in space? And what about the idea of the precautionary principle where operators have a strong obligation to show that harms can be mitigated before taking any action? And then finally, and this is getting back to what was said in the first talk, how can it be that a private company with a legal right to operate, of course, how can it be that they can have an impact on practically every single person on the planet? So this is the fact that some of the largest constellations of satellites, they can be seen pretty much anywhere on the globe by everyone. So that is something new to humanity that we've never had before. So what does that mean? Is it moral given the benefits that we can draw from these satellites? And then when you look at the size of these constellations, so if you imagine a realistic number of, say, 100,000 satellites, the satellites have a five-year lifetime, this means that about 20,000 satellites would have to be added per year just to replenish the constellation. And this means 20,000 satellites per year burning up in the atmosphere. So that's 54 per day. So what does that mean for us? Well, we're still not really sure about this. So those are some questions that I think we need to discuss. And I think that the international system has a lot to think about in this regard. And I put this picture that I took actually of the UN Copious Legal Subcommittee where some of these things are starting to be discussed. But we're much slower than the rate at which private sector is moving in this area. So that's something that we need to think about. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much for that, Andy. Lots of questions, lots of challenges. In particular, the impending crisis or, I don't know, breakdown of the space sector due to space debris and the issues around light pollution are two things that I'm sure we'll touch on shortly. But as moderator, I get the privilege to ask the first set of questions and I've got my own. Some questions, I'm going to start with the question, which hopefully all of you have pondered at some point or other and something that I find challenging myself and ask myself about all the time. And that's the balance between what we loosely call delivery science and discovery science. So that is discovery science is blue skies, pure research, curiosity driven research, which is very important and which many argue is the foundation of everything else we do. Balanced against delivery science, which is something that is providing not exactly a service, but we have a problem, how do we solve it? And almost every country around the world has declared a climate emergency. Now, an emergency, one definition of an emergency is an existential threat that requires immediate action. That's like not tomorrow, not next week, it's right now. And actually, there was a great debate on Monday, no one was just telling me, which was, you know, are we walking into an inferno? So we are, we are facing a climate crisis, a climate emergency. What should the balance be between some of the things you've heard today, for example, what Anna Maria was talking about, which is basically taking the pulse of the planet and providing these, remember that the title essential climate variables, these are things that we really need to know to understand how the climate is changing and how close to critical thresholds and planetary boundaries we are versus, I don't know, I don't want to put people on, but perhaps what Mikella was talking about, which is, you know, exploration and thinking about colonizing Mars and looking further into the solar system and the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. What right now, what should that balance be? Should we down tools? Should we, you know, down tools in terms of discovery sites and really focus on the immediate crisis and put all our energy into that? Or, you know, is there some kind of something in between? So I could sort of pick on any one of you, but does anyone want to kick off with some thoughts about, you know, how we should address that particular problem right now? Go on, go on Alfredo, thanks. I'm going to start and I'm going to say that I think it's very important that we do the delivery science, because we are in the beginning of the advanced beginning of a terrible crisis, and we need to have science to provide solution and guidance. At the same time, if we don't have discovery science, if we don't have everything else, why are we trying to save ourselves? I feel that there's a time and a place for everything. You know, if an asteroid is sort of just racing towards me, I'm going to run out of the way, and then I'm going to think about, you know, what I'm having for dinner later on. But we, you might think that technology developed for a completely unrelated idea is like, you can develop technology for something completely unrelated, and then you'll find some importance in the other application. We, at least from the communication point of view, I get a lot of press release praising the interdisciplinary of new research. And I think if we just put ourselves in boxes that either everything is deliverable or everything is discovery, we might start thinking that the utility of science supersedes our curiosity for science. And we might be missing some new ideas, some new solutions that will come from the people that are thinking in the just on the discovery side. Yeah, okay, okay, I can see two hands up from, I don't know who is first, Mikella, do you want to kick off and then Andy chip in? Sure, thank you. Yeah, maybe Andy went first, but thank you for giving me the word. So there's lots to say here, and I completely agree, you know, it's a climate crisis, we absolutely should be doing as much as possible to save the planet, not just now or future generations, very importantly. But we also need to face the facts, like if you look at for however long scientists have been trying to warn the public about this crisis, what's going to happen, this kind of fear spreading to some degree has not really had a really good echo on the public. And even, you know, when young people took it into their own hands, there were marches, and that was all great. But again, the effect it had on politics was not as big as we would have hoped. But what we do see with the public in general, is that they do latch on to things that are more inspirational or something that, you know, that captures their attention a bit more. So for example, when I do outreach work, I try and kind of capture the public's attention with something, and then teach them something indirectly, because that almost seems to work better than just trying to give them the information upfront. And I think that's where kind of the space sector can work in our favor, where we can use even these human space missions or astrobiology or whatever, which might not seem super useful at first, as something that unites the public with things that they like or interested in, and through that try and spread important messages, some of the things that, you know, we talked about awareness about certain things, climate, international cooperation, all these sorts of things. So it's a good platform to kind of unite people, despite, you know, the fear would actually would many times turn people away. So that's one thing. And then it's also important to emphasize whether food communication, but also amongst ourselves to realize, you know, how much space actually serves us here on Earth in many ways, and how even space exploration kind of like Alfredo said a lot of things that were initially designed to support the astronauts on the ISS are nowadays applied in everyday life and medicine, firefighting equipment, all these things we couldn't have first seen, but they end up being a useful kind of side effect of doing space exploration. So I would say it's difficult to find the exact number of what the balance should be, but I would say neither of them should be disregarded. And though, of course, there should be a lot of emphasis on doing what we can to deal with the climate crisis, we should leave enough space for something that's more inspiring for both scientists and the public and something that will unite people towards a greater project and unfortunately climate stuff does tend to resonate with fear in the public. So it's trying to find a different way of presenting that too. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Michael. That's a very good point. But I think the issue about creating fear is something completely different. And and actually the issue around messaging is a different problem that doesn't prevent you doing delivery science. But Andy. Yeah, thanks. So I mean, I would have started to answer this question by saying exactly what Alfredo and Micaela have said that that the discovery driven curiosity driven science leads to unexpected discoveries and innovations. And then the value of the curiosity driven science in being an inspiration for people to go into STEM, that's something that's that's really important. And, you know, coming from the astronomy world, which, you know, in a way is a sort of luxury science. And I want to argue that it's just it's something that's so fundamental to humanity, you know, to answer to ask the big questions about about the universe, you know, are we alone? And where do we come from? But I think in this, in this case, I'd like to add an additional part to this question, which, you know, one, the the delivery science, you know, the the the Earth observation and the metrology and the practical applications, I think they should have the priority overall, given the situation that humanity is in right now. But I think there's this concept in economic thinking called option value thinking, the idea that preserving options for the future has some value. So by having, you know, a small part of our science and innovation ecosystem, doing something that isn't sort of directed at a specific goal that's been predecided, this still has a lot of value, because it creates a kind of a latent capacity or a or a strategic reserve of skilled and talented people that that have unexpected ideas and skills that can then later on be be applied in unexpected ways. So that's why I think, you know, we always have to have a small pool of resources that's devoted to this curiosity driven science. Okay, thanks. A small pool devoted to curiosity driven science, I think I heard that. I'll last word on this topic to Anna Maria, I think appropriately, perhaps. Yeah, I suppose I work in Earth observation. But I also work for the European Space Agency and the European Space Agency's Convention on the Establishment of the Agency purpose says that we are here for the peaceful promotion of space research technology and its applications between all European states. So that already tells you something about what we are all about. Now having said that, Earth observation is one of the biggest directorate within the European Space Agency. And so we are very lucky in Europe to have such an ambitious agency that really, really works towards convincing our member states that this is so important to invest in. And I was actually looking at the budget from last year, just to get some numbers. And in fact, last year's overall budget to the European Space Agency was on the lines of 16.9 billion euros. And then I looked at what it was when I first started in this job in 2018, and it was something like five billion. So we are growing the pie of funding. And I think that's really important to actually recognize that potentially it's not a zero sum game. We're not competing with each other in the same way as you think we are. We actually, we have full commitment from all our member states to support climate science and environment. And personally, I mean, and this is now me in my own opinion, I think the space for everything. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Thanks for that. So I'll ask one more question, which I think several of the speakers have touched on already, and then we'll hand over to the floor. And it's, it's something it is oppressing. It is another environmental and vertical as crisis that's facing this sector. And that is something that Andy talked quite a bit about, which is space debris. Just to put this a little bit of context, I didn't know this until Monday when I spoke to one of our colleagues. ESA's largest Earth observation satellite is a satellite called MVSA that was launched around 2000. And is no longer functioning. So there's no communication between the ground station and the satellite. It weighs about two tons. It's about the size of a bus. If it is hit, and there's no way of moving it out of orbit, it's stuck there. If it's hit by a piece of space debris and breaks up, it will eliminate what is called the low Earth orbit for about a century. So that's no low Earth orbiting satellites in that, you know, sort of about 800 to 1500 kilometer sort of window for 100 years. You know, that's, that's going to be bad news for, for our ability to understand what's happening with the climate system and protect us from some of the most damaging effects of climate breakdown. And the space sector is, or space is unregulated. If Elon Musk wants to just launch a few hundred satellites into space and not all of them work and they drop out and they break up, he can do that. Anyone can do that if they have enough money and the resource. And, you know, we've known about this problem for quite a long time. You know, there are quite strong analogies with the climate. It's not a, well, it is a crisis, but let's call it a climate emergency. The climate emergency. We're not making massive progress on that. How are we going to fix this one? Andy? Thanks. I just want to come into this because you mentioned the fact that space is unregulated. And I think it's probably better to say it's, it's lightly regulated and should be regulated more, but it's, but it's not unregulated. So just to give a bit of context with the, the space debris issue. So we, I mean, we have now several space agencies and space regulators are starting to lead the way in this area. So NASA and also ESA are paying very close attention to the space environment. We have something called the Inter-Agency Debris Committee, which is a coordination between the major space powers, which have created a set of so far voluntary rules to try and mitigate space debris. The UN Space Committee, the COPUS, in 2019 released the, what's called the Long Term Sustainability Guidelines, which are a set of high level practices to try and ensure the sustainability of, of space. And now we're starting to see that regulators are actually creating stronger rules. So just last year, the US Federal Communications Commission, which is essentially the current way that space activities are authorized in the US, they put in a new rule, which mandates a five-year de-orbiting timeline for any defunct spacecraft. So the operators have to show that they can achieve that before they get to approval to launch. So, you know, things are starting to change. And of course, for the companies, right, for the, for the operators that are going to have, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of satellites on orbit, the space debris issue directly affects their bottom line. So we're seeing operators really actually taking this seriously and come up with some quite innovative solutions and practices. And there's this growing ecosystem now of space debris removal companies that are, that are starting to form. But I think the big kind of question here is, is that, well, you know, who is going to pay for this? And this is, and this is where you start to draw the comparisons between the environmental sector. You know, how is it going to be regulated? You know, can we have a sort of carbon trading-like system? Or could we have a kind of international funds where countries pay in before they can approve any space projects, and then that can then pay for the, the deorbiting missions to take out the debris? So I think those are some of the big types of questions that we're dealing with. Thanks. Thanks very much for that. Anyone else want to comment on this? I guess I'd like to also say that if we're comparing it to the climate crisis, and if you looked at the timeline that I put up about the UNFCCC and how long it takes for anything to happen. Yes, governance in space is a massive problem, and we need to tackle it ASAP. Afraid of? There was a recent editorial, I think it was Nature, comparing what is happening in space with, what happened with the IC Treaty and see if something similar can be done. I think that would be great. From the point of view of communicators, I think we need to keep highlighting just how dangerous it is. I feel that a lot of people don't realize that we're not only just protecting ourselves, understanding the climate, but so many of our day-to-day activity passes through space, and this is why we need space to be a safe environment. I tend to use, there is Google it, there is this picture of one of the windows in the International Space Station that has been hit by a speck of paint, and there is a crack. That is a speck of paint. Imagine if the Envisata breaks apart. What kind of damage can do? Because they're moving at eight kilometers per second. A speck of paint is a bullet that they came in per second. Absolutely right. Now, slight diversion, but I know scientifically it was a load of rubbish, but I didn't absolutely love the film Gravity. If you've seen it, it was quite a visceral experience of what space February does do. Then, Michaela, I think, had her hand up as well. Oh, I have two points. You mentioned gravity, that's the Ketter effect. In fact, I was talking to somebody in East Operations and they were telling me that even if we stop, so again, if we compare it to the climate crisis, even if we stop sending out satellites now, the problem is still there. We need to actually actively start removing things, otherwise we will end up with a real issue. The other aspect that I wanted to say about the speck that hits, I don't know if you follow any of the satellites on Twitter, you can. The amount of time you actually get a notification from, for instance, ESA's cryo sap mission telling you that it will be out of operation because of a manoeuvre to avoid space debris is quite often. That means there is no data that we receive on earth to be used in our analysis to develop climate data records. We end up with gaps in our scientific data records. Michaela? I wanted to pose a question to everyone. What can we do to accelerate these policies being put in place? It's been mentioned that it takes a while, that it's loosely binding and not many people respect it, especially private companies. What can we do collectively to put more pressures on governments and space agencies and so on to enforce some kind of fines for companies, organizations that don't abide by these rules so that people actually feel responsibility and do something about it, and especially kind of going back. Like you said, it's not so much just about what's being released now and there's already been some regulations put in place so that hopefully the next things that are released won't cause as much damage. But yeah, what about everything that's already been released? It's already out there. How do we hold those people responsible and do something about it? But again, it's one of those things that we're only going to be able to achieve progress and to do it faster if we all find a way to put pressure on the people that are responsible for this. And again, I feel like it's going to have to be a united thing globally really to get some proper basically effects for actions. Andy, just actually some of you may not know, but right next door to this building is, I can't remember the acronym, Andy will know, it's the UN Center for Outer Space Something, isn't it? Which, you know, worries about these things, but it's, as Mikella was sort of hinting, you know, a lot of these regulatory protocols are entirely voluntary. A nation, some nations, you know, they absolutely don't have to sign up and they haven't. Yeah, so it's the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs in the UN International Center, I think that you're referring to, which is the office that manages the committee on the peaceful uses of outer space, which is currently starting to think about some of these issues. But yeah, it's a very slow, it's a very complex topic and there's likely to be any binding sort of solution anytime soon. However, I do want to reflect on the fact that we do actually have an allocation system in geostationary orbit. So there is a system that's in place for operators via their national regulators to apply for a slot in geostationary orbit via the system of the ITU. Now, of course, the geostationary orbit is essentially a fixed point in space as viewed from the earth. So it's a bit easier to deal with, whereas a low earth orbit is, you know, it's a much more complex environment and but in theory, we could have some kind of orbital carrying capacity metric that was able to be passed out between different operators based on a fair and equitable system. And, you know, in theory, if there was enough political backing, we could see an agreement on that, you know, just in the same way that we got to the ITU agreement and in the same way that we have an internationally accepted air traffic control system. But I think the other point that Michaela was mentioning was, you know, how do we actually make this happen? And I think that's something that is kind of unique about the space environment is that no one is directly affected by the spaced every problem yet or can really tangibly feel it. I mean, it's not like the climate, whereas, okay, the climate change is happening on a global scale and it's relatively slow to the human life scale, but we're starting to see, you know, tangible things happening like wildfires and increasing bad weather. But that isn't happening at the space environment. So, yeah, I think, you know, we need the public communicators, the science communicators, to try and find ways to sort of bring this message to the people and make it something relevant to the public so that they then raise this as an issue to their political representatives. Okay. Thanks for that. We're obviously not going to solve that one here and right now. But I think, so, let's, I'd like to open it up to the floor to have questions from, if you could come up, if you could sort of line up by the first microphone at the frontier, the, yeah, this one. And I think let's see. Okay. We got two so far. I think we'll take both questions at the same time and then we'll sort of go around the table and then pick up some more as we go along. So, hello everyone. Very nice discussion. I have a follow-up question on whatever was being discussed right now. So, as you mentioned, Andrew, if regulation is increased, and if you make companies pay for the space missions, what about new space? What about the company that is just coming up, just dreaming of creating change in the world? Most of the technology in space is ancient and we don't continue. If we don't continue with missions, we are never going to make any progress. And there are also countries who are misusing space by putting up military satellite or launching anti-sats, creating more debris. Shouldn't they be more regulated? Shouldn't the powerful be more regulated instead of putting up these regulations for every single company or any mission that is happening? So, there's a very clear analogy with climate justice there as well actually. So, many analogies. Thanks for that. Okay. Can we have the second question? Yeah, sure. I have almost the opposite perspective. Okay. That's interesting. And first of all, actually, I'm really happy to see that this discussion was not about the nonsense that we can infringe on planetary boundaries and, you know, exploit space. I think, unfortunately, I want to note that this ideology is being paddled by billionaires to continue their equicidal lifestyles. And like, yeah, considering the discussion that we had, I want to propose maybe, you know, ESA can really push for the ban on commercial space flights. I see that as one logical thing to do because, yeah, indeed, we need space for exploration and now is not time for colonialism. Thank you. Interesting. Yes. That's very, very different perspective. So, sort of summarizing two questions, you know, if there's regulations, shouldn't it be proportionate and shouldn't it somehow accommodate the fact that certain nations, you know, almost entirely Western nations are largely responsible for the junk that's already out there versus a ban on commercial exploitation of the space sector? I think there is merit in both of your perspective. I think it is important that it is absolutely clear who is the polluter and who has the power on putting stuff into space. And for as much as the commercialization of space has led to a massive increase of this problem, like for as much as I love to bash in a mosque, it's not been SpaceX fault that there is space debris. There's been space debris since we've been sending stuff into space. So, if we decided to just ban commercial entities, we would not solve the problem. What we can do is make sure that the people that have been having all the privileges to send stuff to space pay their more than their fair share of things. And that there are equal, equitable opportunities throughout the world to bring mostly science like just last week we saw Kenya deploying their first satellites. It is important that emerging low income countries and emerging space countries have their opportunity to conduct their science and their research, even though the only way for them to send the satellites was through a SpaceX rocket. So it is important that this regulation that our voluntary moment are made compulsory so that we can make space an equitable theater of exploration. Okay, I mean, Andy had the same point up there in one of his slides, which is that the polluters pay. I just point out that that has been a 100% unsuccessful approach when it comes to fossil fuels. Look, my other option is we guillotine all the billionaires and then we just survive. I was trying to be more. Does anyone else have any thoughts on like whether we should Okay. Okay. Yeah. Did you want to make just one? Yes. Go for it. Because I feel if you look at the scale of what is going on currently, you know, we had 2000 satellites in space until four years ago. And right now it's over 5000 last count. I don't know. So it's it's really exponentially growing. It's it's we can't have this crazy situation where one person is planning like 42,000 satellites. It's insane. Right. Did you have that? Go for it. Yeah. Okay. Stay there. Andy, put his hand up. Yeah, so I just wanted to kind of point out and, you know, again, I'm not a huge fan of SpaceX given the impacts on astronomy. But, you know, we have to look at the facts. And actually, in a way, the worst offenders for creating the space debris, you know, it's 10 or 20 defunct rocket bodies which are still floating around there and the same number of defunct satellites, which have all come from either USA, Russia, China, or Europe. And, you know, in terms of contribution to the overall problem and the projections of the, you know, the space debris environment in hundreds of years, it's those things that are the biggest contributor. It's actually not the Starlink constellation who, you know, in their defense are actually implementing some pretty innovative practices to avoid space debris. And they're also operating at a very low altitude, which means that, you know, it's not really much of a problem. I think what the bigger kind of question here is what you said, Jonathan, is that, well, the polluter pays approach in the fossil fuel industry has been unsuccessful. And I can see that the same sort of dynamics emerging in the space sector. So it is, you know, it's a strategic environment, right? It's critically important to countries' national defense and security. So the countries have this, you know, huge kind of incentive to grow the space sector as fast as possible and to do it at the expense of others, basically. So that's the fundamental problem. And I think I'd love to learn from the environmental sector actually, you know, how these issues are being addressed and, you know, what solutions are being proposed and to see if we can actually apply that to the space sector, because I don't know what the answer is. Okay, thanks. Thanks. We'll move on from that topic. I just close that topic with an observation. I do wonder how successful it will be in convincing the Russian Space Agency to clean up or contribute to the cleanup of the current mess in space. But do you want to ask your question? Yes. So my question is, could we prayer to space race, even if it's already begun, but to don't have all the problems we have talked about the beginning of this session, since the beginning of this session. First, implement some kind of, I don't know, dictatorship about billionaire people, because we can let them do whatever they want. They have too much power. So we can let them throw away the future of humanity just for their pockets to get filled with money. It's impossible. And I think that the second thing we should do is actually to somehow unify humanity, because we can't have, like, right now, each power, each country want to have its own space program, want to get their own satellite in space. And it's just for competition. And we don't, we haven't speak even about a war problem purpose. And I think it's a huge waste of money and resources. Okay. So I think, I think your question is, there should be better cooperation in the space sector. Is that kind of broadly it? It's not just Ben's space corporations. Like, I don't know, I think that the space exploration should be about humanity altogether getting to space, something like this. I don't know, maybe I'm a YouTube channel, but I think it's the only way. You're not quite got it. But just an opposite, I mean, there is a lot of cooperation between, you know, the major space agencies like, like Jackson, that's the Japanese one, CSA, China, Canadian Space Agency, DLR, German one, and ESA, NASA and so on. And there is an organization called GEO, which is, you know, designed to coordinate. It's called the Group on Earth Observation. So, so this does happen, but Anna Maria. Yes, I think I was just about to say that it might be a bit of a false statement to say that we don't have any cooperation amongst the world space agencies. This does exist, and we closely work together. And in terms of climate, if we talk in terms of the climate data records, we meet regularly to try and see what we are doing in Europe, what people are doing in Japan, because we don't want to be duplicating work. And we want to be coordinated and make sure that we are producing work that is useful. And sure, there are lots of different products out there, for instance. But that's also important because we need to be able to test and do exercises into which of these products are better. So, going back to cooperation, I think it's a false statement to say that there isn't any cooperation between the space agencies. I think the tricky part is about the commercialization, certainly. And I feel out of my depth talking about this, because obviously I'm not at all managing that sense. But these are deep questions. These are questions about world order, really. And what do you want? And not for the agency, not on behalf of the agency. But I definitely, again, if it's about making people aware that this is a problem, yes, we need to talk to our neighbors, talk to MPs, talk to the media, and really make sure that it's high on the priority. That's your responsibility as a citizen. Mikayla. Yeah, I mean, I would just kind of add to that. So, yes, there is some international collaboration in the space sector. But it is also very exclusive in some ways. China is doing a lot of great things in space, but NASA won't work with China. And there's so many regulations for other countries, how they work together, if they work together at all. And as some of you mentioned, the war is now causing all sorts of issues on that front. So, it's definitely not global, happy space where everyone's working with everyone sharing information. And yes, there is no easy way to solve that. Some ideas, things that unite people in the past, having international missions together, like on the International Space Station, that's where we saw international groups working together despite the Cold War and things like that. And that's one of the reasons missions beyond Earth are being brought up in this, going to the moon again or one day to Mars. If we could find a way to have that be something international, cooperative, where it's both on a national level in terms of space agencies, international level too, but I mean also adding international companies into that, then we could hopefully find a better way to have people kind of working together, following regulations, which tend to be disregarded if they're kind of everyone's doing it in an individual kind of basis. And we know that the public is interested in these topics, so it'd be something perhaps we could leverage to unite people across the world and finally stand together behind these regulations that otherwise unfortunately seem to be ignored a lot. Okay, thanks. Thanks very much for those thoughts. Do we have any other questions from the floor this stage? Two things. The first one is that as one of the panelists said, we do have a successful example in terms of space junk and that's the airline industry. Why can't we follow that example in terms of cleaning up the junk? The second thing is all the discussion so far has been around the earth and not much about future exploration and could the panelists say something about future planetary exploration? Yeah, I think that's a very good point actually. I mean, you know, the big space agencies like Ether and NASA do spend a lot of money on solar system science, you know, and exploring other planets in the solar system and missions that are curious about things that go beyond those. I guess, Alfredo, do you want to say something about those sorts of priorities? I think when it comes to, actually to answer the different question that while you were discussing, airline companies, that is a great point, but I was also thinking maybe the regulation to get rid of CFCs, save the whole zone, maybe something that we can take inspiration on how to fix the space junk problem, but beyond earth, I think there is a lot more caution when it comes to the possible cross-contamination that it could come. Like if there is life on Mars, if there is life around the moon of Jupiter or Saturn, there is, scientists are actively thinking on how to detect it. And it might turn out that we're not being very good, I don't know, that maybe that curiosity or perseverance that there are on Mars or the Rosalind Franklin rover that will launch. I've been thinking that it's the best of our abilities, but maybe in 10 years time we realized, ooh, we could have done a better job because we just realized that our process was not perfect or the juice mission that was sent, that was launched last two weeks ago from ESA will crash land on Ganymede, on a part of the Ganymede, if there's an ocean, it's under 100 kilometers of ice and rocks. It's very unlikely that there is contamination, but maybe we'll find out something and we will have to reconsider things. So I think those questions about our impact are very much at the forefront when it comes to exploration beyond earth. But we still consider human exploration, for example, Mars as something that it's, ooh, it's a given that we're going to get there. Well, let me just, I can see my careless hand up there. I think one of the audience kind of hinted at this that some activities like that are kind of vanity projects of very rich people, billionaires or whatever. But I mean, you know, we're making it a bit of a mess of planet A. In fact, you know, we're really screwing things up. It is the most habitable planet that we know about in the universe. Does it even make sense that we should think about colonizing other planets? So that's definitely for Michaela. Well, first of all, I'd say hopefully we'll stop using the word colonization and colonizing. And that's why I've been saying human settlements. And I hope that that will get more into the general public too, because we really want to step away from that mindset and really look at it as, you know, or try to make it as fair of an endeavor as possible. And yes, of course, you know, I get asked those questions a lot. What's even the point of looking at having human settlements beyond Earth? So maybe I'll start with like the most pessimistic approach. Jonathan, you mentioned an asteroid earlier. You know, what if there's something that happens to Earth? An asteroid hits it, yellow stone explodes or whatever it is, and that might cause major damage on this planet. Perhaps, you know, humans might not be able to survive for very long. So one idea is to basically make sure we don't have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. So having trying to build human settlements beyond Earth is a way to kind of protect our species in the long term. Of course, that may not affect us today. We're talking future generations, but as we see with the climate emergency, that perspective doesn't always help people when thinking about the future. But it is one rationale for why go beyond Earth. Another kind of practical aspect is what I mentioned before, is that a lot of technologies get developed that are useful for us every day when we go into discovery science, and actually trying to find ways to survive on the moon or Mars is going to be extremely difficult. And in order to do that, we're going to have to develop technologies, for example, in how to grow food under these extreme conditions. And unfortunately, with the way things are going on Earth, we may need that technology here. We may need to find ways to grow food under extreme conditions because our planet is changing. So a lot of things we're likely to develop in order to survive on these other planets will come back and help us in some shape or form on Earth. So it's not just a one way thing in terms of money usage. And then finally there's that uniting perspective. If we could find a way for the first missions to say Mars to be something truly international and fair, that would be a great way to unite people around the world, finally behind one vision. And they could finally agree on all these things that we're trying to fix today, perhaps because we'd finally put in some international regulations that organizations and companies would respect. So that's kind of a nutshell version of that. I think that's that's an extremely well rehearsed sales pitch there. Well done on that. I can see that we're sort of running out of time. And so what I want to do now is just allow the speakers to sort of close with a few sort of final thoughts and perhaps take her messages. I think we got kind of one from Anna Maria at the beginning, but maybe she has a different one now. So I'll just go round. I think probably in the same order that we we had to speak before with just kind of few final thoughts about you know, our best our best steps going forward in terms of exploitation and exploration of space. It was not really. I think it's, I think it's very important that we are that we understand both the risks and the benefits of humanity going beyond the little protective shell of our atmosphere. I think it's crucial that it's well communicated by the stakeholders from researchers from space agency, from private companies, why they're doing what they're doing and and the impact of that. And then it's the job of people like me, communicators, making sure that the public is aware and that the public can through pressure on politicians to public discussion can affect change if they don't like what's happening. And I think it's very important that we make access to space, the use of space as democratic as possibly be. Mikella. Yeah, I fully agree with Alfredo. And I think I just mentioned that first of all, we have to accept that this is happening. And, you know, as much as perhaps, you know, some of us would like to change the way things are and change the focus of, you know, how much we're investing into these activities, they're going to continue happening because of governments, because of rich individuals having power and all that. So I guess instead of fighting it, we have to find a way to work with it. And so ideally, yes, use our influence or voices to try and put in place these changes through trying to make sure these regulations are actually abided by perhaps come up with these international projects that would encourage these different organizations and companies to work together. So basically, just unfortunately, like a lot of these big issues, fossil fuels, all that instead of, you know, trying to avoid it, we have to deal with the reality of it is something that people are interested in. It is something people are going to invest in. So let's try and find a way to work with it. Though unfortunately, yes, it is more complicated and it will always kind of come down to these regulations being enforced. And that means putting pressure on people and power to do that. Thanks, Anna Maria. Yeah, I agree with communication is absolutely vital. And of course, at the Space Agency, we really spend a lot of money and effort in trying to reach out and, you know, tell the public what we are doing and explain why it's important because ultimately, we are governed by our member states and, you know, they do what what their democracies tell them to do. So telling people what is important is crucial. I'm not sure I agree with the accept what is happening because that's such a passive word. I think we all have a place, a role to play in this world and it's up to us. I mean, I guess I'm coming from the climate side of it. You don't just accept what is happening. There's no way you do that. You really put in the effort and try to show the evidence why we need to act. And we do need to act in terms of space debris. Absolutely. We need to sort out a governance system. I know we didn't actually answer the question about new space and I'm very sorry about that. Again, a little out of my depth. But I don't think not having regulations means it's going to be fairer. I, you know, we need to put regulations in place that are there for all. And so I agree that I think with the very rapid pace that space technology is developing, it's going faster than our ability in a way to have this regulation in a fair and equitable way. So that's that's something that we really need to work on and, you know, actually devote funding to. But then on the other side, I mean, just reflecting on the fact that we, you know, we had this first test of the SpaceX Starship a few days ago that Alfredo referred to in his talk. And, you know, this is a heavy lift capability. If it actually works out, I mean, it's undisputable that it's really going to change the landscape of space exploration in a fundamental way. And I'm not I'm not endorsing SpaceX here. I don't really like Elon Musk, but it's but the the facts are undisputable. You know, a reusable heavy lift launch vehicle will allow many new projects and really extend our reach into the outer solar system and will make things like resource extraction from from asteroids in a way much easier, which could solve some of our problems here on earth. We need to think about and this is what. And Michaela was noting that the the benefits of space technology can be useful for the earth. So, you know, if we can if we can enact a good way of doing in space manufacturing, this will reduce the need for so many launches and this will, you know, have a positive net environmental effect and help the space debris problem. And in the same way, if we can really solve or create a good system for space space solar power for doing computing in space and having our data centers in space and reduce the need for energy consumption on earth, which will contribute to the climate situation. So, you know, those are some things I think we still need to hold in mind and, you know, have a vision for why we're in space and what we're doing. And also from the astronomy side, I mean, there are some very interesting opportunities with some of these things that I've mentioned to improve astronomy. So, you know, we try to look at both both sides of the picture here. Well, that's that's what I want to say. Thank you. So I'm going to bring this to a close now and I'll sort of offer a potted summary of what I think I heard today. I mean, we're not going to solve all the problems here and now. And then many of them, I guess, sort of paraphrasing, you know, we're a flawed species and sometimes we do really stupid things, but we're also a really smart species. And sometimes we do very clever things. And, you know, let's hope we do more of the latter than the former. I think that's pretty much it. I'd like to really, really thank very much the four speakers for a fascinating debate and discussion. And thank you for coming along and inputting to this important topic. So thanks. Thanks again.