 Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great pleasure to welcome you here today on 17th May. This day we celebrate World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, and we truly have a very exciting program for you. Before we kick off our program, we have a few words from the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, video message. World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, which also marks the birth of the International Telecommunication Union. I commend the ITU for the critical role it plays in erring the digital divide and connecting people wherever they are, whatever that means. As we look to an increasingly digital future, I welcome your focus on exploring how artificial intelligence can accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals. I also commend you for inviting pioneered astronauts to share their experiences about tackling new frontiers. They are an inspiration to our efforts to expand opportunities for women and girls in technology. Emerging technologies have the potential to empower people and transform how we transmit knowledge, increase agricultural yields, harvest sustainable and renewable energy, treat diseases and so much more. Let us keep working together to ensure these technologies serve the global good of all humanity. Thank you. And thank you to Mr. Guterres. It's now my great pleasure to introduce the Secretary-General of ITU, Mr. Julien Jau, to tell you all about World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. Mr. Jau. I think that we still have some seats on the front row, you know, the people in the back can come to the front row here. Excellencies, dear colleagues, today is a very special day for ITU and all our members around the world. Today we celebrate World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2018. And our theme this year is enabling the positive use of artificial intelligence for all. ITU was born on 17th of May, 1865. ITU has been at the center of advances in communications for over 150 years. These technologies ranging from the telegraph, telephone, the radio, broadcasting, the television and the satellites to the internet, mobiles, 4G, 5G, cloud computing, the internet of things, deep space communications and artificial intelligence. Every year, since 1969, ITU members and partners have organized events across the world on 17th of May to recognize and promote the positive role that information and communication technologies can play in our societies and economies. At this ceremony today, we have three special sessions. We will pay tribute to someone who has contributed to the work of ITU over 50 years. And we will celebrate the very first issue of the new ITU journal, ICT Discoveries. And first, we will have a very special program to promote the women in ICT, AI and space activities. We will have a chance to meet and hear from two female astronauts and one female space explorer. ITU and space have a long and rich history. We develop global regulations and standards for radio systems of key importance for Earth observation, climate monitoring and space missions. We started to allocate radio frequencies for space communications in 1963, just six years after the inaugural flight of the SPANIC, without a dedicated spectrum for space missions. How would we communicate with astronauts, with the spacecrafts? How would we conduct scientific research? And if we want to see the spacecraft, if we want to talk to them. If we want to receive the result of the science programs, we needed to make sure that the spectrum will guarantee all these communication channels. ITU has contributed to the success of the space missions, including those conducted by our special guests here with us today. And we are now on the path to open up new opportunities for space activities during our World Radio Communication Conference next year. In China, there is a saying, women hold up half of the sky, for the landing by maintain. Valentina Tarekhova, the first woman to fly in the space 55 years ago, once said that a bird cannot fly with one wing only. Human space flight cannot develop any further without the active participation of women. We are pleased to see many women participate in the space missions. Today, we are joined by three extraordinary women, Ms. Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman in the space. Ms. Samantha Christopherity broke the record for the longest space missions ever completed by a woman. She had stayed in the sky. She had stayed in the sky for more than a half year. And our moderator, Anoshi Ansari, is the first female private space explorer. I also want to pay special tribute to another female astronaut, Yalina Konokuba, who was the very first woman to enter the cosmonaut program with the male classmates in Russia. Actually, she traveled to Switzerland yesterday, but unfortunately today for some special reasons, she could not join us. We also thank her for her enthusiastic agreement to join us today, but for very special reasons, and unfortunately at the last minute, she could not come to this stage. This woman shows us that math, science, engineering, and technology can make you rich for the stars. But that's not all. And we reflect on this potential of artificial intelligence to accelerate the United Nations sustainable development goals. Our specialists can shed new light on the meaning of artificial intelligence and take for good, and for everyone, in particular for women and girls. So please join me in welcoming three of our finest space explorers and tech advocates, Liu Yang, Samatha Christoforetti, and Anoshi Ansari. Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for this special session, and it's my privilege to have two wonderful colleagues here on stage that will share their experiences and stories with you. We're going to start with a quick presentation and I'll share a little bit of my story and how I became interested in space and my wonderful experience of flying to International Space Station, and then we'll hear from our colleagues here. So can I have the presentation? Great. So I was born a long, long time ago in a country far, far away in Iran. I grew up actually with this passion and vision of going to space. I fell in love with the stars at a very young age, and all I wanted to do is become an astronaut. I even drew this picture, showed it to everyone around the house, and I told them this is how I'm going to go to space, and of course, as you can imagine, a young girl in Iran, no space program, nobody believed me, but I like to show people that they're wrong about me all the time, so not only I had to go to space, I had to go in a rocket that resembled my drawing, so you can see that how I was able to predict the future. I believe in imagination. I think human beings have this amazing gift that is very unique to us, and that's our imagination, and that's what allows us to actually create things that do not exist, you know, create places, invent things, and it all starts with the spark of an idea we get, and it may be an inspiration we got by seeing something outside, or watching something on TV. I was a Trekkie. I loved science fiction books, and soon enough you see yourself in those positions, in those heroes in the book, and then you can make it come true. I came to US when I was 16 years old. I didn't speak English, didn't have any money, but I knew I wanted to become an astronaut, and I found out that it's not going to be possible for me. I wasn't even a US citizen, and so I took a different path, became an electrical engineer, became an entrepreneur, eventually many years later sold my company, and became involved with a project to make my vision happen, because when I looked around for the Starfleet Academy, there was no Starfleet Academy. A long time had gone since the first endeavors of Yuri Gagarin to space, but the space was not open to the public still. There was no Starship Enterprise to take me to galaxies far, far away. So I decided that I'm going to do something about it. So when we sold our company, I had the privilege of meeting an amazing individual called Peter Diamandis, who had this vision and a dream of a competition, a competition that would ignite, you know, innovation in space and open it up to everyone, democratize it. And that was the X-Prize Foundation, and I became a partner in this endeavor with him and became the title sponsor of the Ansari X-Prize. And that was the first X-Prize launched. It was a $10 million prize to open up space for everyone. And it was to reach the edge of space about 100 kilometers and do it twice within two weeks. There were 26 teams that competed for this $10 million prize, and over $100 million was spent to win this $10 million. So we figured that, you know, this is a fantastic idea, and it worked in space. It could work in other places. And not only it worked, but it worked in manners that we never imagined. And right at the time when the prize was won, Richard Branson stepped up and turned it into a business, Virgin Galactic was launched. And I believe maybe even this year, because they've done their successful test flights, we will have the first commercial passengers experiencing the flight to edge of space. Because of a lot of regulatory changes, policies that we change, and the awareness we created, a $100 billion industry was generated. You have companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin right now that are becoming partners with the government space agencies and really advancing innovation in space much faster than it has ever been seen before. We didn't stop at the Ansari X-Prize. We have another space-related prize that's ongoing, the Google Lunar X-Prize. Even though the Google sponsorship ended just a few months back, because there was so much excitement in the teams, we are continuing the Google Lunar X-Prize, and it will become just a Lunar X-Prize for us that would allow other sponsors to step in. But until then, it is actually ongoing, and the teams are continuing to build their rovers for a moon landing. And we're very excited about the technologies that were developed for this prize. And we are very, very proud to announce a very recent partnership with NASA, and NASA's Frontiers Development Lab in a collaboration in looking at prizes around space resources. And you can learn about this at the NASA Frontiers Development Lab website. This is okay. Good. I'll do a private session for you later. In Chinese. In Chinese. But, you know, we've been talking about AI and exponential technologies. We had our colleagues that talked on the trust in AI track. And a lot of these conversations around technology, sometimes outside of these walls, especially, creates fear. Because it's something we don't understand. And human beings' natural response to new things and things we don't understand, and we cannot predict is fear. But the reason we're here and we're having a session on AI for good is to actually overcome those fears and not allow fears to drive our decisions, but actually let hope drive our decisions. And that's why we want to use AI technology, use space technology, use everything at our disposal to create a beautiful future. And with everything at our fingertips, I think that's possible. And it's just we need to use our imagination. And that's why we are here today. And I'm especially here today because I want to see a lot more young girls entering the field of technology and STEM and become engineers, become astronauts, people like Haga, who's a Syrian refugee, who dreams of going to space. And I hope one day her dream will come true. So I'd like to share with you a video that takes you on a journey to space with me. And then I will pass the baton to my colleagues. It was something that I wanted to experience for myself. The mystery and the unknown out there always have been drawing me to space. The universe is calling me. So this is the winning of the XPRIZE flight. Sorry, the title sponsor of the Ansari XPRIZE. Congratulations on today's flight. I'm not afraid of risk. This is a risk worth taking. And having the view we saw today on the monitors of Spaceship One is just an experience that's out of this world. And I would do anything to give my life to experience it. So when you fly on the Soyuz, they make a seat liner that casts it to your body. So this is the Leonardo da Vinci of the Cosmonaut program casting this. This is the centrifuge training area. Zero G flight. I actually had family members who came and joined me on one flight. These are my crewmates when we were getting ready for a final exam. Mikhail Turin was the Russian Cosmonaut on this mission. And Michael Lopez Alegría was the NASA astronaut that accompanied me. This is the morning of the flight. So after going through the preparation, you board the bus and you actually go to the rocket and then ride a small elevator to the top to where the capsule is. We were just reminiscing about it, you know, coming down the elevator here. It was a very difficult experience for my family and all the astronauts' family to see their loved one go on these missions. But they're all very supportive in every aspect of the work. So on my mission, it took two days in the capsule to dock to the space station and this is the docking, actually. There were three crewmates waiting for us, making us feel at home. The first time I will see the Earth as a really beautiful glowing blue globe in the background of the universe. So one fun fact about being in space is that because you're floating around, there is no concept of the ceiling or a floor. So you see equipment all over and as you change your orientation, the floor becomes a ceiling and vice versa. This is my sleeping bag right here, right by the best view from the world. The views from space station is amazing. From up here, everything's really peaceful and you can't see the borders, you can't see different race, different religions. All you see is just one Earth, very peaceful and beautiful rotating and I think that's part of the reason I wish more and more people would be able to experience this firsthand because talking to the astronauts and cosmonauts, they have a different perspective on life and how important it is for us to do everything in our power to preserve the only home we have in the universe. So thank you very much. So we have Ms. Liu Yang who is the first Chinese female astronaut who flew to the Chinese space station and also she's a pilot, a major in Air Force and we're so lucky to have her here with us. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I'm Liu Yang, a tachanaut. It's my great honor to attend this conference and share my outer space experience. Six years ago, Xinzhou 9 spaceship which was developed by China was launched with three crewmates aboard including me. It's the first time that we performed manual rendezvous and docking. It's also the first time that we entered Tiangongman. Thus, we started a meaningful and memorable tour of space exploration. About 10 minutes after the lift off, the rocket sent us to the scheduled orbit. I'm sure I will never forget this long, long 10 minutes featured the expectations and excitement. Though I have been well prepared and imagined a thousand times the image of space, I was still greatly astonished. I can hardly describe its beauty because worth few to express how beautiful and miraculous it is. The borderless space tells me what broadness and infinity is, looking back on the Earth from 340 kilometers away. The planet, where humans and other creatures have lived for millions of years, looks so glamorous. I saw the oceans with deep shallow blue. I saw the clean contour of the land and the long coastline. This is our beloved homeland, Earth. She deserves our love, cherish and protection. Sure, the beauty of our planet is quite beyond words. These photos and videos were taken in space. It's funny to share that at my first sight of the Earth from space, I couldn't help shorting. Look, the Earth is round indeed. The unique microgravity environment not only challenges our space tolerance but also brings a unique experience in meantime. Without constraints on gravity, I felt like a free fish swimming in the ocean of space. Microgravity set all the things free. They seemed alive, floating and flying. In Chinese fairy tales, we have an omnipotent monkey king who can travel 108,000 miles with a single thumb thought. During my flight, I had a dream in which I transformed myself into the monkey king, flying in the clouds, turning a thumb thought freely. That was amazing. Human exploration of space has never stopped since 1961. However, we should note that space activities are still highly risky. Thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence, we can anticipate that AI astronauts could be very helpful in future human space flight missions. Anyway, human astronauts will never be replaced since they are still the essence of human space flight. We formally believe that the essence of human space explorations will be significantly improved with the assistance of AI astronauts. Space exploration will never stop since human spirits of exploration never come to an end. We are delighted to see more females join us and play a vital role in the exploration of the universe. We will always be expecting we step further into deeper space with astronauts and scientists from all over the world, men and women. It has been placed on the agenda in China to build a new space station around 2022. We have started the selection of new technology. We are looking forward to a closer cooperation with international experts in our space station. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Liu. Now I'd like to invite Ms. Christofretti to join us. She is the first female Italian astronaut who flew to the International Space Station as you heard with the 200-day record of being in space. Samantha. Thank you, Anusha. Mr. Secretary General, thank you very much for inviting me here today, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure and an honor to be on this panel. I know we do not have much time, so I will make use of my privilege of being the last speaker to be extremely brief because the two ladies who spoke before me have so eloquently already expressed many of the things that, of course, I have experienced and felt in my astronaut career as well. It's really funny. I don't know if I ever told Anusha this story, but several years ago I read her book. So Anusha is also an author. My dream of stars, I believe, is also the name of the memoir. And so she was telling her story briefly outlined today in more detail about her upbringing in Iran and on her life story, especially when it came to her childhood in Iran. All the time, you know, every page I was like, oh, my gosh, me too, me too. Same for me, it's me too. So it was so funny how, you know, I grew up in Italy and she grew up in Iran, but somehow our childhoods were so similar. It was an amazing experience. So yeah, I gave that away already. I'm a European Space Agency astronaut of Italian nationalities. So I was born, I went to school, grew up in Italy in this tiny little village with a beautiful, light sky with no light pollution, so the sky was a very powerful presence. Like Anusha grew up as a trackie, as a science fiction fan, very adventurous child and wanted to go to space. I have to say, in my case, I was never told I couldn't, to be honest, and I never had any doubt that I could. I mean, I knew that it was going to take a lot of luck because there's very few people becoming astronauts in Europe in a generation. In my generation, it was six all over Europe. So it takes a lot of very fortunate circumstances, but I think I'm one of those girls and young ladies who were actually never told that they couldn't do what they wanted. So I was pretty confident that if the circumstances allowed it, I would be able to do it. My path went also through engineering studies. I studied mechanical and then aerospace engineering at the University of Munich. So I chose from the very beginning to have quite an international education. During my university studies, I also spent time in France and Moscow. Of course, I knew that the Russian friends are a major partner in the International Space Station. So it wasn't by chance, of course, that I chose to go to Moscow to do my thesis. I spent a year there. Then I had a chance to come back to Italy and join the Air Force, and I became a combat pilot for the Italian Air Force. I was at the very beginning of my operational career when this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came up to participate in the astronaut selection of the European Space Agency. So I became an astronaut in 2009, together with five other colleagues of diverse backgrounds. You don't have to be in the military. You don't have to be a pilot. Three of my colleagues are civilians, war and are civilians. A couple of them had no flying experience at all. One was a pure scientist, another was a pure engineer. So there were opportunities for very diverse backgrounds in the field. And then I started to training. I trained for several years around the world. I always had a suitcase packed. I spent a lot of time in airports because when you're assigned to a mission to the International Space Station, we call it like that for a reason. It's this amazing infrastructure in low-Earth orbit. It's as big as a football field, and it's basically this big laboratory where you can do research in microgravity, which is just a fancy word to say that you're weightless and things float. And that's very interested for a number of scientific research disciplines in physical sciences as well as in life sciences. And so it's called International because it's the product of a big partnership between a different space agency. Of course, NASA and Russia are the major partners. But we as Europeans have a major contribution, both to the European Space Agency and in some cases also through bilateral contributions of single countries, like my country, Italy is very, very active in that sense. And of course we have the Canadians and the Japanese. So when you're an astronaut in training, you're basically going to all those different places all the time. Like you might be three weeks in Houston and two weeks in Russia and one week in Japan, and you're bouncing around the continents for about two and a half years. And then finally, for me also that moment that Anusha showed in her beautiful video came about, which was the launch from the Cosmodrome of Bikonur in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station. It was up there quite a long time. Rotations are typically five and a half months. And then when we were getting close to our return, there was an accident of a progress resupply ship. So a little bit counterintuitive, you would imagine a cargo ship doesn't come, so you don't have supplies, so you have to come back earlier. In our case, because of the way things played out, we actually had to stay a month longer, which I thought was great. And so we ended up staying almost seven months on a space station. Doing a number of scientific investigations. There's typically on ISS about 200 scientific investigations in one, what we call, long duration mission. I supported spacewalks. I was at the controls of the robotic arm. It's physically what astronauts do in the ISS world. We're a little bit all jacks of all trade. We're only six up there. The Russian colleagues, three, take care mainly of the Russian operations on board and all the American Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, which are care of the rest of the station, and we kind of have to be able to do everything. That's why the training is so long. I look forward, of course, to go back to station eventually. Probably sometimes in early the next decade, it will be my turn again. We're planning to operate space station at least until 2024, maybe even further beyond that. But we're also looking into what we call beyond low earth orbit exploration missions. So that will be in a first step, building a habitat like a small space station in a very peculiar orbit around the moon, which will allow us to test our technologies and also operational concepts for missions which are not so close to home. Space station is only 400 kilometers, so it's very close. We have robust concepts there. We have robust technologies. But when you go further away, things become a little bit more complicated. And then habitat, the orbit of that habitat is chosen in a way that it provides a relatively easy access to the moon's surface so that would be the next step. And then eventually after that, but then it's a little bit more, quite a bit more long term, on to Mars. So artificial intelligence will be instrumental for all of that. Of course, AI is pervasive in everything we do in space nowadays, and I think many of the tracks that were presented today were proposing projects that rely heavily also on satellite data. So of course, ESA, European Space Agency, is very interested in leveraging the potential of AI to make that data more useful. We have a number of Earth observation platforms on orbit within the Copernicus program, and it's obviously of interest to have a system that in an intelligent way is able to fuse all that data and make it usable for different applications for European and world citizens. But at the same time, if I talk about things that are very close to my heart, which is of course human exploration of space, AI is going to be extremely important for that as well, because we all understand that a lot of the human mission, especially on the surface, the top moon surface, Mars surface, are going to be preceded by what we call robotic precursor missions. So autonomous robotics, autonomous navigation, even the ability of a moon surface rover to autonomously, intelligently pick a route, pick a sample which is interested from a geological scientific investigation point of view. All of that would be extremely instrumental in making space exploration effective and affordable. Sometimes people ask me, why haven't we done that before? We went to the moon 50 years ago. Why are we talking now about maybe getting back in the next decade? It's not really that much of a question of technologies, it's a question of the price tag and all the political implications that go with the expensive programs. So the more we can leverage technology and again, AI is going to be key in that to make those programs efficient and affordable, the more likely it is that that will actually happen. Thank you very much. Great. So I have a few questions that I'm going to get started on and then we'll invite the audience for a few questions as well. So let me start with you. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to become an astronaut and what challenges you faced when you were on the space station, on your space station. I was born in Tai Yang. But later on, I found out that I was born in Hang Tianyuan. I think Hang Tianyuan is the person who was born in Tai Yang. I wanted to be born in Tai Yang so I chose to be an astronaut. In fact, it's because there are so many interesting things in the universe that I want to see and see what the universe in Hang Tianyuan is like. That's why this dream became a name for Hang Tianyuan. Thank you. Samantha, there are many people in this audience that I know of that want to become an astronaut and also outside these doors, many, many. And as you said, it's a difficult process. Can you tell us what would increase our chances or the especially young women out there that also want to join the astronaut program? What would increase their chances? There's no... I mean, at least I'm not aware of any special recommendations specifically for women. The path is really the same for everyone. Again, things change fast and we are in a very dynamic environment now when it comes to access to space, especially the Earth orbit. There's a lot of companies in the US that have mentioned some of them who hope to be able to offer in the near future at least suborbital flights, but actually some of them are also looking into commercially available orbital flights and potentially even building platforms in low Earth orbit which are sold on the market. I have no idea whether that makes sense from a business perspective. It's completely out of my field of expertise and probably Anushina knows more. That might come and so the opportunities to go to space will multiply. There will be many, many more and the type of professional profiles that are sought after might not even be the same. I think it's an exciting time where opportunities will multiply to go to space or at least there's a chance that that will happen. For talking, let's say the traditional astronaut hired by a space agency to be a professional astronaut for a certain number of years and have a career in that way. Typically, there's two fields where we recruit which are the STEM, let's say, science, engineering, technology, math also medicine background and the aviation background, so pilots. Or you can have a mix of the two. In my case, I studied engineering then went on to become a combat pilot but had quite a short career in that. If you go straight to become a pilot, then of course it's expected that you have a longer career in that, become a test pilot and can show a strong aviation background. Where some people have a pure engineering and science background. What I will say to the people who chose the latter, so maybe become scientists, really good scientists, really good engineers and have that dream of becoming astronauts, I would try to add to the curriculum, something which I would call operational. Something that shows the recruiters that you are comfortable also outside of your lab or outside of working in front of the computer because that's really important and I'll give you two examples. The two colleagues of mine selected in 2009 who were not pilots. One of them is a scientist and he had in his background, well, basically, you know, when a volcano explodes and people start running away from the volcano he starts running towards the volcano because he was a geophysicist and studied, so he had that in his background, he had a number of expeditions in Antarctica and on the basis of course are considered a classic analog of spaceflight. The other one, a pure engineer with a PhD in engineering but had spent a number of years on offshore oil platforms. Again, a confined environment, potentially dangerous, you have to go to a number, you have to follow certain procedures, you have to be able to work with people that are there with you, you know, there's no escape, so again, very similar to spaceflight. So if you don't want to go in aviation you're going to go in science and engineering find something like that to do that shows that you are capable of handling yourself in environments like that. Otherwise the recruiters will not be able to say whether you can be trusted in such an environment or not. Thank you, Samantha. So if your researcher out there just go find something really, really dangerous and adventurous to do. Liu, let me ask you when you went on your space trip, what did you find surprising, what was challenging for you? It was a very deep experience and it was very shocking. You would think that the Earth is a community of human beings. But when you look at the space, you can see that the astronauts are very, very relaxed. In fact, to be an astronaut to adapt to the environment of spaceflight, the challenge is very, very big. Everyone knows that when the astronauts enter the space, it is very easy for them to move. I think this is a challenge that the astronauts face when they enter the orbit. They need to overcome their own ways or use their own will to overcome them. Another challenge is that at the moment in spaceflight, all life and work are completely different. And in the small space environment, people's emotions and knowledge will also be affected. In about half a year, China will build its own space station. Just like now, in our space station, every time we stay, it takes half a year or longer. So, for astronauts in the future, this is also a big challenge. Of course, this was also a challenge when we flew. I think for me, the biggest challenge is the environment and the loneliness. For the future, I think for the future, this challenge may be bigger. But we have many training methods and I believe we will overcome this problem. Absolutely true. The loss of gravity is something that our bodies and our minds and everything has to get used to. It's fun and I was surprised how quickly you can switch and get acquainted with just living in space. Let me ask you, Samantha, another question. You talked about the importance of technology in the future of space exploration. Can you maybe use some examples or some of the things that you feel is most important in the future of space exploration in 10 years and beyond? Has ESA designed a new international space station for example and what's on that international space station? Of course, whenever we talk about human space flight, we always talk about program scene cooperation. It's very difficult for a single country except maybe China to afford a human space program on their own. In the last years, there's been a convergence among the traditional partners and also including new partners like China about thinking what should the next steps be? How are we going to approach exploration beyond low Earth orbit? There's been a convergence about building this habitat I discussed about. For a long time it was called Deep Space Gateway. They changed the name, it might change again, it doesn't matter. But there are very concrete studies now out there to define the architecture of the first modules of this habitat which will have sort of like a service module, they call it power and propulsion module and then probably an intermediate small module for edit capabilities and then a habitation module. So it will be very small, not like the previous one right now but it will be a start. And as I said, it will be on this very highly elliptical orbit around the moon but it's going to take about seven days to go around the moon and on one side it's going to come really close to the moon surface so a very perfect place to land. Technologies, I mean, well of course I can stop saying that I mean to me a sustainable space program comes really down to affordability and make it sustainable from an economic, from a budget point of view. So of course reducing the cost of access to orbit is extremely important. Reusability of rockets has become this new hype and just a few years ago people thought it was actually impossible and now of course history has shown that it is possible and I think a lot of computational techniques from the artificial intelligence toolkit have been instrumental in allowing this rocket stages to actually fly themselves back to the, or back to Earth or to the ocean and basically pinpoint the landing like that because of course they have to be able to react to unexpected atmospheric conditions and that you can only do with artificial intelligence techniques. Generally speaking when we talk about exploring and going further out, right, not space station. So on space station we talk almost like on a Skype call. It's very close so the delay is very small. We're talking about the surface of the moon of course it's already different, we're talking about more significant delays. If you're trying to control the real time a rover like navigating it around like on a video game from Earth it becomes complicated and the delay starts to become starts to have an impact. If you're talking about Mars then even more so, I mean that would be completely impossible. So autonomous navigation is going to be very important again, very much out of the AI toolkit. If we're talking about long missions you need to be able to have technology which is extremely robust. A lot more robust than we have on space station now. On space station now we have this space station. We're doing a lot of space so we have spare parts for everything, spare units. It's not going to work on a small habitat or on a small spacecraft to Mars so we have to find new solutions. New manufacturing solutions I mean there's a lot of one of the other things that there's a lot of hype about of course is additive manufacturing. The fact that you don't have to bring all of your spare parts you might be able to just send a file and print it on need so that you don't have to bring all the material once you're done using that and reuse it so that's one of the things that we look into. In CETO resource utilization you talk about surface missions on the moon or on Mars. One of the key questions is how much can we actually get from the land, living off the land. How much can we get from this regulate which seems like a simple scent but actually if you start looking into it it has in it a matter of technological development of surveying the sites of course of understanding exactly what's available and then of course of the extraction technologies. Then of course there is the big topic of autonomy I mean you need to be able to take much more autonomous decisions right now everything is you know space station is flown from the ground you know everything every decision that affects the spacecraft is taken on the ground by flight controllers astronauts will have to be a lot more autonomous for deep space missions so they will need to be able to leverage the intelligence of artificial intelligence systems to help them make decisions and of course to automate the decisions I mean the vehicle needs to be intelligent it needs to perceive whether I don't know we're going towards a failure whether something is progressing towards an off nominal situation and take automatic actions. Thank you. Excuse me. I want to add the space cooperation of our space mission in Taiwan in 2022 we are going to build a new space station but more like we have built a public platform in space we are very welcome to work with other space experts in other countries such as SEMASA they trained in China last year they are studying Chinese and we are also learning English using our open and cooperative attitude to welcome everyone to join our space station thank you I may sign up to go we actually trained not to but last year for the first time trained with tyconons in China German colleague of mine Matthias Maurer and myself trained in China and did sea survival training with I believe 12 or 15 I forgot Chinese tyconons so that was a very big step towards cooperation and who knows maybe when they flying on the Chinese space station I look forward to that and now we are promoting a new space station for other countries that's wonderful maybe one or two questions from the floor and if you don't have question I have one last question oh right there yes the lady in the back you have to turn on your mic I want to ask a question to Liu Yang Hello Liu Yang I know that you are the first female employee of China and you are also the first female employee of China maybe at the beginning of the world people and friends think that the world is dangerous maybe at the beginning you will be questioned but your story has inspired a lot of women to do things they don't dare to do but the world thinks it's impossible what do you suggest to these women to face these challenges don't be disturbed by the outside world you have to see your goals see your dreams as long as you are brave as long as you are brave as long as you are persistent as long as you are passionate you will be able to achieve your dreams and achieve your goals thank you any other questions yes thank you very interesting for all of us what I would like to ask is you have been very much excited to go there what was the excitement to go back what was the feeling when you have to go back I was very depressed and I didn't want to come back but I don't know about these ladies how did you feel coming back it was similar for me I've been up there for a long time but still it's hard to come back but to be very pragmatic it's also for very simple pragmatic reasons in the end you get used to life up there it's a beautiful life in a way a very simple life you are in a confined environment every day exactly what to do because somebody else is going to plan your schedule and you are perfectly trained to do everything that you are asked to do which in our normal life it's not like that life is predictable life is complex life entails a lot of interactions and you are never perfectly trained to do everything that you are asked to do in real life so if I have to be honest I think part of it was like leaving space and the beautiful view from the wind and part of it was just this I don't want to go back to this complex real life on the ground absolutely well thanks everyone we are out of time we have a big panel with all of you and thank you for joining us on this panel thank you ladies and gentlemen it is now my great pleasure to invite Mr. Julien Zau to present our extraordinary Space Travellers with the WTISD award Mr. Zau would you please present the WTISD award to Ms. Anousheh Ansari please present the award to Ms. Yu Yang and the final award to Ms. Samantha Christopheretti and if I can just ask the ladies to join Mr. Zau we do a nice group photo this award for World Telecommunication Information Society today is in recognition of the incredible dedication and outstanding contribution in the pursuit of space exploration and to the advancement of technology and the progress of humanity congratulations it is my pleasure to now invite a gentleman who has made an extraordinary contribution to the world of ITU and telecommunications without him according to Mr. Zau the sky would fall as the gentleman are obviously holding up the other half Dr. Marco Jagojic please join us on the podium I would like now to take a moment to recognize an exceptional individual and someone I'm very proud to call my friend Dr. Marco Jagojic Dr. Jagojic started the participation in ITU activities in 1968 as representative of the national telecommunication industry and academia in the former CCITT which now became our standardization sector from the start his work made a significant impact on the specific needs of developing countries this led him years later to become a founding member of the advisory board of the center for telecommunication development which marked the beginning of a new era ITU's development work and led to the creation of our telecommunication development sector ITUD ITU also allowed to the dedication and commitment of Dr. Marco Jagojic through his involvement with telecom over the last 30 years or his constructive role as a delegate at almost all ITU planning potential conferences since the knees in 1989 Dr. Marco you have been a valued and a trusted colleague from those first study groups on transmission system back in 1968 to the telecommunications advisory group where you still serve as a Slovenia representative you are an example for all of us you have left your mark on ITU's history ITU is grateful to you and through you to the many many experts all over the world who have strengthened the role of our organization in its more than 150 years history experts like Professor Mark Krivoshev of Russia who had contributed to ITU's standardization work on radio technologies in particular TV technologies since 1948 he is still with us and ITU was pleased to present Professor Mark Krivoshev our work two times in recent decade including the ITU 150th anniversary award and a friend Mr. Herb Boateng of the United States who has worked with ITU standardization work since 1976 ITU Secretary General also offered him a certificate in 2016 for his 40 years contributions and he is also still with us ITU highly appreciates the contributions made by all experts in the world and so today I am very pleased on behalf of the entire ITU family to present this medal for 50 years of continuous and fruitful services to one of ITU's most distinguished and respected figures please join me in giving Dr. Mark a big round of applause this is our golden medal we did not attribute this medal to many and I am very pleased to present this medal to Mako Ladies and gentlemen and dear colleagues I am really honored to accept this recognition for my long work with ITU which was a real not only pleasure but experience professional as well as personal I mean ITU is really an exceptional worldwide organization which should continue and not only continue but even maybe more influence the future development of not only telecommunications but everything related to the human society and world as a whole thank you Ladies and gentlemen for the final element of our celebration today I would like to invite Professor Song of the ITU Journal to join us on the podium Dear friends ITU has a new journal we call it ITU Journal ICT Discoveries because the entire history of ITU is marked by groundbreaking discoveries in communication technology and because we have helped bring the benefit of these discoveries to millions and millions of people across the world our first issue is dedicated to artificial intelligence a new technology that will help us tackle some of the world's biggest challenges and we investigated the technical but also social and ethical dimensions of advance in AI the second issue of the ITU Journal we are turning to data 2017 itself produced more data than the entire history of humanity this time we will be investigating the data dimensions of modern economies and where innovation can ensure that data proves a force for good I encourage you all to participate you have until 29 of June to submit your papers the ITU Journal strengthened the bounds of ITU with academia the very concept of this journal developed out of ITU academia consultations there is no doubt that the long term vision of academia will help policy makers and industry leaders prepare for the impact of major breakthroughs in research it has been a long time dream of mine to see this journal become a reality and so today I am very pleased to celebrate this first issue and would like to recognize some of the people behind it who are here with us today Chatham Lee director of ITU's standardizing bureau which has taken the lead on this project the ITU Journal's editor-in-chief Professor Song Jian of Tsinghua University of China an associate editor Dr. Rose Gasser of Harvard University and Stefan Ibraki the outreach chairman of the ITU Journal may we stand up and Professor Ose Gasser may we stand up please no no thank you to all editors and authors including Professor Thomas Weirkan and we also he is one of the receiver of five individuals ITU awarded at our celebration of 150th anniversary for his excellent work on the very famous video coding systems H.264 and nobody can deny that this coding system is a very powerful tool that nobody can use your mobile phone to look at video messages without this technology and he is one of the key experts behind that one thank you and also we have Dr Wajika Samek of course as well as the team ITU staff to support this journal please give them all a big round of applause with that it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to Professor Song Jian for some remarks thank you Mr. Zhao I realize I can deliver this speech in Chinese in a very short time but I can also do that in English without this but that could take much longer time since I realize I'm the only guy standing between you and your lovely lunch so I'm going to do that in the short time ITU secretary general Mr. Zhao ladies and gentlemen good afternoon as editor-in-chief as well as university professor it's my great honor and privilege to introduce the progress of academia journal of ITU called ICT Discoveries on behalf of the whole team we have some gentlemen over there and also a lot of editorial team members sitting around so basically I also would like to share the experience of this prime example of how ITU and academia are enhancing collaborations to our mutual benefit above all the research community works in service of the public interest and our main goal is to contribute to social good academic and research institute hope to publish their findings as widely as possible and we hope to ensure that our work supports social and economic development in a global basis we share these ideas with United Nations in this ITU journal we see a valuable new opportunity to serve the public interest and make our research known to the public and private sector decision makers worldwide the first issue of the ITU journal explored how artificial intelligence will influence the communication networks and services since there is a rapid developing area and we will surely revisit this area again in the not-distance future so please stay tuned as Miss Zhao mentioned the second issue of this journal will share a strong bind with the first one and will investigate the data dimensions of modern economies in particular on how data could act as a force for good and again the second issue is inviting the submissions until 29th of June if you go out you can find a table which has the flyers regarding to the call for papers for this issue and we're looking forward to receiving contributions from the experts participating this summit and please also help disseminate this information among your colleagues in these related areas please don't hesitate to stop by for chat following this session and I will be glad to share more about this new exciting directions in ITU academia collaboration with you, thank you all Excellencies ladies and gentlemen we have arrived at the end of the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day celebration I would like to congratulate once again our adventurous ladies I hope you find this celebration as fascinating as I did and it's now my great pleasure to invite you all to enjoy a light lunch outside the pop-off room have a lovely afternoon, thank you