 Wait till that presentation comes up Good afternoon everyone. My name is Chris and I'm the COO of Astro scale And we want you to join us as space sweepers So I'm going to start today by asking a question. How many of you used outer space today? Yeah, the answer is not just you but all of you when you woke up today you checked your email You may be skyped with your family or friends. You looked at the weather You found out the directions of how to get down here All of that was dependent on space and satellite technology Without satellites you would not have had the capability to do all those things So today I'm going to be speaking about 20 minutes and when I'm done. I want you to remember three things One our lives right now are wholly dependent on satellite capabilities in orbit to The sustainability of the orbital environment on which we are all dependent is at risk and Three the time is right for a private sector Contribution to the solution to this problem So first our lives are dependent on satellites in orbit. I already mentioned it, but I'll say it again everything we do from the mundane daily tasks of communicating with family and friends to managing our bank accounts to checking the weather is dependent on satellite technology everything we do for our future for our children understanding the earth's climate Mitigating natural disasters dependent on satellite technology if we didn't have those capabilities now if we went back in time 20 years We would have trouble surviving and our children certainly would the way they're dependent on it So the first point is we are wholly dependent on these satellites and when did that start? Well, it started about 60 years ago when the Russians launched that first satellite Satellite Sputnik into space. It didn't do much. It was just up there sending down beeps But it portended an incredible future, which is where we are today So in September 1957 one month before Sputnik launched This was the view you would have of the earth orbit of the earth environment the orbital environment around earth Nothing there from a human-made perspective now here. We are 60 years later, and it looks like this The earth orbit environment is filled with satellites now all of these are providing incredible benefit to us But it also is a risky environment and So we've now established that we are completely dependent in our daily lives and for our future on satellite technology Now I wanted you to remember that the sustainability of that orbit is at risk Looking at this video the red dots you see are debris Trash in orbit not serving any purpose the small white dots that you see are active satellites Every one of those red dots in orbit is a potential risk to those white dots in orbit to those Satellites that we're using every day for those daily activities. We talked about earlier Over 99% of the objects in space are debris 20,000 of them objects are about 10 centimeters or more enough to destroy a satellite or parts of the space station Hundreds of millions are up under a centimeter. We don't even know So the current orbital environment is very risky. It's very useful, but it's very risky Now what are the impacts of some of these debris? Here's a picture taken by an astronaut on the space station Tim Peake you see the little chip in the glass That's from glass on the International Space Station luckily It's multi-pane so it's protected but you can see it's like a ding in your windshield when a rock kicks up and hit your car Windshield that's what happened there. That's from a one millimeter size reflective paint a One centimeter ball bearing a test that the European Space Agency did Shows the impact of a one centimeter size ball bearing on a piece of metal like that Incredible damage from a tiny tiny piece and remember these two on The one millimeter side Hundreds of millions of pieces the one centimeter side Thousands and thousands tens of thousands of pieces so the damage that even a small piece can do is significant and Then the potential is also there for large satellites to collide This is a view of one collision that happened in 2009 between a communication satellite called a radium and a defunct Russian satellite their orbits crossed They crashed and each piece split up into thousands of new pieces and Every one of those thousands of new pieces is the potential for another accident. It becomes exponential It builds on itself. It's becoming a problem. And if we don't solve it now Then it's going to be even more of a problem in the future. It's really an environmental issue And so we can see from 1957 when that first satellite Sputnik launched the incredible increase in the amount of objects in space This is the current situation Now how is it going to be going forward? It's going to get even more crowded Launch cost the costs of putting a satellite into orbit are dropping considerably and so we can see that Going forward most of the launches will be done by private sector smaller companies up until now It's been mostly governments And they've been launching huge rockets that put big satellites into orbit Going forward. There are multiple small launch companies We've all heard of SpaceX or Blue Origin the big ones But there's a lot of small ones as well providing on-demand launch service of small satellites So whereas launches around the world, maybe we're happening every couple of weeks going forward We're going to see them a couple times a week more and more assets being put into space So at the same time that these launch costs are dropping considerably There's a number of satellite constellations being planned The cost of building a satellite is becoming easier and cheaper and so there's two main bands now Orbital bands where we expect to see lots of satellites in the future One is about 500 kilometers to 600 kilometers up remote-sensing earth Observation satellites Thousands will be launched in the next few years The other band is at about a thousand kilometers up and most of those are communication satellites Companies looking to provide a global broadband communication anytime anywhere you want it Up until now from Sputnik. There's been about 8,000 satellites launched ever From now for the next 10 years possibly 20,000 Maybe three times as many satellites in the next five or ten years will be launched then have been launched in the last 60 The orbital environment is just going to get more crowded Solving the debris problem needs to be done now But how do we solve it? The three biggest questions that we always get that you all are thinking right now. I know it is who pays How is it gonna be paid for? How is it regulated? The orbital environment is a global commons. No one owns it. How do you regulate it? And what is the technology? Those are the three questions on your mind So the time is right for a private sector to contribute to this solution an Astroscale the space sweepers are that solution. So we are an international company that is solving a global problem We've been around for about five years. We have about 45 people at three offices with it one We're just starting in the United States now We've raised fifty three million dollars in capital and our mission is to secure long-term spaceflight safety And we're doing that through two methods, which I'll talk about in just a little bit one is Don't add any more debris to orbit basic right end of life services any satellite that launches from now Make sure we can bring it down and the second way to reduce this debris is called active debris removal Any of the satellites that are already up there find a way to bring those down now They have similar technical solutions, but their differences and Doing that active debris removal is much more difficult We're starting with the end of life services and we'll talk about that in a second So of my three questions the first one who pays We think removing orbital debris is essential from an environmental and a business sustainability sustainability standpoint So it's not only the right thing to do for the orbital environment It's the right thing to do for a business if all of these companies are going to be launching satellites into these orbital planes They don't want to have anything to disrupt it. It's like highways these are orbital highways and Just like a trucking company wouldn't want a broken-down car in the middle of a highway going across a country Companies don't want to have a significant amount of debris in the way of their orbital highway So it's a business case situation from a from a company perspective and it's also an environmental situation It's a circular topic. So the society benefits the environment it benefits the economy and we all benefit So it is a cost to a company, but it's a cost that they should be willing to take on and Also the government the government Governments from various countries have been responsible for launching a lot of these satellites in the past and so we're talking to governments also to contribute to cleaning up the environment now and We see and we think the company see and the government see that there is a business case for this solution Studies are showing that the global space debris removal technology market is going to grow I mean, it's just a matter of math in this case, right as we're looking at launching these thousands of satellites into orbits where a Certain percentage will fail history has told us that and the future we don't expect to be any different that there will be Problems going forward a certain percentage So they will have to be removed from orbit and at certain heights if we don't remove them from orbit They'll stay up for hundreds of years. So bringing them down is important But then how do we regulate it? It's still hard There's no global orbital police that are gonna go up there and pull someone over or assess fines if someone doesn't bring it down It's it's a it's a commons area. So it's very difficult. So how do we regulate the orbital commons? We have to use a variety of pressure points We've got to use those operators that are building the satellites make sure they understand this issue Talk to national governments make sure they understand and are willing to contribute to some fun to help clean it up Space agencies are very obviously interested in it. It's their assets that are up there that could be threatened insurance providers Intergovernmental organizations like the UN trade associations Academia and think tanks all of these different areas We're talking to and we think that it's important that they stay involved in developing norms and best practices It's hard to develop laws because again, there's no one there to enforce the law So the most important thing to do is develop norms and best practices And it's also important for the public to understand The public needs to understand that this is an issue and and I think most of the time people don't recognize how useful space is and How much at risk it could be if we don't solve this problem. So it's up to all of you After you hear this presentation to go talk to your friends and family and say hey There's an issue here that we should be aware of if we want to continue the kind of life. We're leading today So it's a multi-pronged approach to finding how to regulate that orbital commons So we talked about who we think will pay we think the commercial providers and the governments can work together to find ways to pay We talked about how we regulate this all of these different pressure points Developing these norms developing these best practices for future use as for the technology What we're focused on the first thing we're going to do is that first step that end of life services So we're going to say that every satellite that launches from here on out Should be equipped with a mechanism to bring it down if it fails So our proposal we would put Magnetic a plate that has a magnetic properties on it. It's not magnetized but has magnetic properties attach a lightweight Very thin plate to all satellites that launch and then when it's time to be deorbitant We would send up a chaser satellite to attach to it with a magnet and bring it down So that's our first proposal is this backup deorbit technology that we would want to institute on any satellite that goes Into certain orbits. We're working on right now a technology Demonstration mission actually go back called Elsa D end of life services by astro scale And so we're planning to launch this mission next year and it will demonstrate our capability to track to identify rendezvous and dock with a piece of debris and then attach to it so our Elsa D mission we're going to launch it with a piece of Dummy debris attached to it. We'll have a chaser satellite the one you see on your left and Then I'm sorry. You're right and then a and then a debris satellite attached to it They'll launch together when we get to our desired orbit. They'll separate It will use an optical finder to find it attached to it separate again We'll turn the debris around so we can prove that we have the capability to track and rendezvous and dock And we'll attach again, and we'll do that three times And then we'll bring it down to a lower orbit, and it will burn up in the atmosphere That's our technology demonstration mission, which we then hope to use again for our Elsa missions We're hoping to mass produce those and use those for future satellite missions And so our two plans that we talked about earlier. Don't add any more debris remove the debris That's already there the first step that Elsa D is the don't add any more debris so our customers We're looking at these private sector Satellite operators, and we're going to try to target those satellites that might have failed in orbit and bring them down to Maintain the sustainability of the orbit to maintain the business for the companies that are providing it We think this is a the rationale here is the business continuity maximizing revenue and then adhering to those best practices that you are all going to tell your family and friends about that We need to institute The other side the active debris removal is we're working with the governments And we think the governments have the motivation to have a commitment to orbital sustainability And assure that that orbit is safe for all operators in the future Both of them have a global Responsibility to make sure that orbit is sustainable for us and future generations. It's vital So as for our company timeline We've started as I said five years ago. We've gone through three rounds of funding so far We have an office here in northeast Tokyo and we have one in Singapore one in the UK We're building our team and we're building our technology to demonstrate this capability We expect that in a few years we will be able to provide enduring business case for end-of-life services and for active debris removal Working with the governments working with the operators to make sure that the orbit is sustainable for your future and your children's future Overall Astro scale is an environmental company with a business mindset Our mission is to secure long-term space flight safety safety and orbital Sustainability for the benefit of future generations Thank you very much for your time and thanks for joining the space sweepers team