 peaceful use outer space that contribute to global stability on earth. Our mission is to work with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions to achieve the secure sustainable and peaceful use of outer space again benefiting earth and all its peoples. We are dedicated to the establishment of an effective and efficient systems of governance, prouder space, and improving the safety operations in earth orbit. This effort includes developing the tools of governance that lead to reducing the threat of orbital debris from learning international civil space situation awareness to improve knowledge and transparency and preventing the creation of additional debris through hostile acts. So today you have a slide here over how to ask questions. We will be accepting questions in the Q&A portion so you can see step one by the Q&A button click on it. Look and see if someone's asked a question you want to ask. Have you seen any questions that look interesting? You can outboat them by clicking the happy thumb and then if not then just put in the question that you want to have answered and we'll go from there. Please don't put any questions in the chat itself and general reminder if there's a chat that everyone can see everything. I would like to say as well this event is on the record. It is being recorded. The video will be up on our website in a couple days. It will have a transcript made and media have been invited. And so the format for today is we're going to have our keynote speaker give a presentation and then a panel and after which the Q&A will be held for all for the keynote and the panelists. We have plenty of time to be thinking of great questions and with this group of experts at the end. With that you get right to the meat of it. I'd like to go to our keynote speaker. The Space Data Association is one of the first efforts by industry to share a space-situational awareness data and coordinate efforts to enhance the safety of spaceflight. Its Space Data Center is now 10 years old as of this month. Happy belated birthday STC. Our keynote speaker Pascal Othier will now discuss how the organization was created and how it evolved over the past decade. Pascal joined SES in 1990 as a flight dynamics engineer and is currently leading SES space operations where he is responsible for safely operating SES, Geo and MEO, or 3B satellites, more than 70 satellites. On November 2019 he was elected the chairman of the Space Data Association. Pascal, take it away. Thanks a lot Victoria. Maybe you can go to the presentation. Okay so next slide. Because starting with a quote so since 2005 the number of satellites launched into space has been increasing regularly year on year. Last year the MIT Technology Review predicted that the number of satellites orbiting Earth could quintuple in the next decade. The proliferation of small satellite projects being of course the key driver of this increase. This has a huge potential to cause debris fragmentation events and severe congestion beyond the scale we ever seen before. So of course tracking these satellites will become extremely complex. Emphasizing the importance of continuing to feed and share accurate actionable data via independent repositories like the Space Data Center of the SDSC which as already mentioned by Victoria celebrates this year its 10 years of flight safety services. So do you think the next 15 minutes or so you will learn how the SDA and SDSC tackle the flight safety gaps? The lessons learned from these 10 years of LDC operations and the changes of SDA would expect to see in the coming 10 years. Next slide please. So let's go back to 2009-2010. What triggered the creation of SDA and SDSC? This is very well described in a quote from T.S. Kelzow, the worldwide recognized expert in space traffic management so-called STM. When he presented a look back on STM from 2029 in a looking back panel at the MWAS conference in 2019. Here's what he was saying. Let's start it in 2008 with pioneers like Intelsat, Inmersat, SDSC and Telesat doing something that in 2019 might be called crowd sourcing. We realize that STM, unlike STC, is not geographically limited and that any accidents would affect the global space commons. That means STM was an international issue and an international organization in the ASD case was formed to manage data collection, quality control, analysis and reporting. And satellite operator realized that STM was truly a collaborative effort and that individual operators or countries could not do it alone. Next slide please. So back in 2010, I think we maybe should go back to slide four there. I think we should skip the couple of childhood. You can get back to slide four please. Yes, thank you. Back in 2010, the existing products and services for flight safety did meet satellite operator needs. Why not? What were the gaps? The main gap is that only few operators had the capability to monitor closed approaches using publicly available space track information or had a separate agreement with JSPO. These free legacy SSS or Space Situational Awareness Services were intended as ads of notice of an upcoming closed approach but because the notice was considered as not very tight, not verified, sorry, therefore not trusted, it was not acted upon. Why did the operators not trust those closed approaches notices? Here are two main reasons. The first one, SSE products and services were unnecessarily degraded by simplification, faulty assumption or lack of quality control. Comparison of SSE data with operator space data identified issues like unrealistic position, velocity, error covenants provides, errant observational and orbit association with the object mean to represent. Second reason, SSE products failed to incorporate spacecraft operator data. In particular, the closed approach notice failed to consider station keeping manoeuvres which are quite frequent on geosatellite for example, typically once per week. So generating misleading or errant thread warnings but more alarming, missing two closed approaches. Also, back in 2010, lot of closed approaches coordination was done through personal contacts between various flight dynamics codes. Next slide please. Before describing how the SSE feels, these gaps are just described. Let me first describe what the SSE and SSE do provide. So formed in 2009, the Space Data Association is a formal non-profit association of civil, commercial and military spacecraft operators that support the control, reliable and efficient sharing of data that is critical to the safety and integrity of satellite operations. SDA is a legal structure and agreements that provide protections and informants mechanism to ensure that data is only used for intended purposes. Another key purpose of the SDA is to promote responsible behaviors from operators in all orbital domains to ensure the protection of key assets and the space environment. SDA works also with all iterative parties, entities to help define the next generation of STM systems and capabilities. Next slide please. Finally, the Space Data Association relies on the Space Data Center, famous SDC operated by HGI for flight safety data exchange and processing. Who are the users of the SDC system? The SDC system provides services to 30 global operators or spacecraft spanning all orbital regimes, form factors and mission types. The SDC system performs safety or flight analysis for nearly 800 spacecraft, about 500 spacecraft in Leo and Mayo orbits and more than 270 spacecraft in the geo orbit. Next slide please. Let's describe briefly the current SDC 1.0 system that I refer to the drawing there. I will describe the data flow from left to right. So on the left are the data contributors, which are either the SDC members who upload, either manually or using a machine-to-machine interface, the manoeuvre plan or ephemerits with manoeuvre plans backed in, all the US government space data with CDMs or special perturbation ephemerits, of course pending SSA data sharing agreements with the JSPOC, and then also option is a Celestrack database for TLE elements mainly for debuts. The SDC system is then processing this data using two interrelated subsystems. So you have the SDC system which is a lower box on the right, which is performing TLE-based flight safety warnings. That means it's performing conjunction assessment using operator ephemerits and TLEs for debris, initial notification to the members. The SDC ops subsystem with a box on top is performing a second stage SP refinement to SDC TLE-based conjunction assessment. That means it's processing the SP data in a CDM from the US government and compare with the operator ephemerits conjunction assessment, an issue result of this comparison to the operator. So the operator has full visibility of this comparison. And of course this also the SDC operator, AGI, to do an effective quality of control of the data. I will come back on that. Next slide please. No, back, maybe we go on slide eight please. Are we, no we are not on slide eight. Can you go on slide eight? Yes, thank you. So back to the key question. How does the SDA and SDC change SSA? Let me start with what I think are the two main contributions of SDA. Can you go back one slide? I think it jumped again one slide. Okay, thank you. So first, so let me start what I think are the two main contributions of SDA. First, by providing interfaces to JSPOC and space tracks and by developing an efficient monitoring and warning system using operator operational information, SDA has been providing effective conjunction assessment capabilities to a large number of operators. I recall that until 2010 only a few larger operators had effective SSA capabilities. Second key contribution, during the last 10 years the SDA, sorry the SDC and AGI experts have demonstrated that effective SSA relies on using the best availability to manage closed approaches. In fact for active satellite, SDA and AGI demonstrated the importance of using the operator information about the manoeuvre plan, which could be quite complex for electric propulsion with frequent burns every day. Next slide please. I would like now to describe three key elements of the SDC services with significantly changed SSA. First, the SDC was upfront of data exchange technology. Indeed, the SDC framework emphasizes and facilitates broad crowdsourcing and data exchange for the purpose of safety of light, similar to a data lake construct. Second key element, the SDC system benefits from AGI experts who are closely monitoring the data quality by comparing information from different sources. This comparison has given many discrepancies in SSA and operator space data product. Geo-operators discovered for example that certain of their satellites were operated few hundredth of a degree away from their nominal longitude slot due to ranging biases. The system issues also notification in case of discrepancy or expired SSA input data. Third key element, through the SDC services, the SDA is significantly contributing to improve SSA capabilities by, for example, encouraging JSPOC to publish CDM with Covalence Matrix and by working with JSPOC and STATCOM to pioneer application of SPF Emerits in 2014 for best-of-breed flight safety services. Next slide, please. To complete the presentation of SSA changes triggered by the SDA, let me quote two SDA director colleagues and Dan Oldtrock from AGI CSSI. The first quote, the SDSDC showed operator that it was possible to screen all-on-all objects and have a strong legal framework. It also forced a cooperation between operator even though there were competitors in the same marketplace. I would compliment this quote by saying that SDSDC provides a computational secure framework on top of the legally secure framework protecting operator-properity data to prevent a notorized release and providing control, reliable and efficient sharing of information. Note also that SDSDC provides a granular operator phone booth by area of responsibility, location and management level. Second quote, it feels the need to have a commercial solution that is independent on a given nation's desire to provide a free non-optimum service. It underpins the need of a shared approach for the utilization of near-earth space with the finite resources we all know. Third quote, it leaps from the institutional services by providing more reliable conjunction warnings. We go to the next slide. So I've described the SDSDC and SDA and how they are effectively contributing to flight safety. But the true question is how do we achieve true long-term sustainability of space activities? Here are three elements of answers based on SDA SDSDC lessons learned during the last 10 years. First, flight safety derives from the comprehensive aggregation of massive amount of observation, data, environment statistics and risk assumption and of course advanced analytics. Second element of answer highlights the importance of data exchange becoming increasingly important as the number of operator spacecraft dominates the non-debris population. During the last 10 years, the SDSD has always championed collaboration and information sharing through its SDSDC system. And it is this model which continued to meet a risk for all operators. Third element of answer is in fact an advice. Government SDSC and STM initiative should learn about the SDSDC system and its operational concept. In particular, about SDSDC innate ability to crowdsource space data from spacecraft operator and meld them with accurate space-divery catalog from the US Air Force, for example, which has allowed SDSDC to generate decision-quality space traffic coordination and management analytics, so called STCM. Serve as a distribution hub for space data, be a focal point for comparative SSA and quality control and finally provide high availability SSA and STC services. Next slide. So to conclude my presentation here, I will try to answer the following question. What changes would SDA like to see in SSA in the coming 10 years? I will focus on three changes. First, ultimate goal is to support a safe and sustainable operating environment. Realize globally relevant readily available safety or flight services that espouse an incorporated space data exchange, commercial SSA and STM services that pair new sensor technology with advanced data fusion algorithm to dramatically improve SSA solution and prediction. Second change, related to the above, involve life safety policies which are not yet equipped to accommodate the rapid change associated with first the new space large constellation and second improve SSA sensor and enlarge space catalog. What's the effect of these two changes? They will overwhelm the old operator with conjunction alarms per day by the factor of 50 or even an 100. How to avoid and manage the situation? This can be resolved by a greatly improve SSA accuracy, completeness, timeliness and transparency to limit alarms to those requiring an action those requiring an action and b once the SSA data is improved enough to support it introducing new safety constructs to include for example autonomous SSA. Next slide please. As a third change, let me share with you the SDA vision. Our vision is to promote and support the application of advanced SSA analytics and sensor types through commercial SSA services, crowdsourcing on a global scale, sensor agnostic data fusion in new government SSA and STM initiatives. In particular, we want to support the U.S. Department of Commerce Initiative to provide space traffic coordination and management services as well as all the government initiatives like the European Space Surveillance and Tracking System, so-called USST. Finally, I would like to complete that presentation by thanking Dan Oltrok for major CSSI for his value of inputs to this keynote speech. Thanks a lot for your attention. Thank you Pascal. Really appreciate having that insight to how SDA evolved and the thinking through the processes that you guys created over the past 10 years and now we're looking forward to having our panel speak. So here's a slide with our panels, panelists. We haven't listed alphabetically but just to shake things up I want to have introduced them in the order in which they'll be speaking. So our first speaker here will be Mark Mahon. Mark has held a wide range of satellite acquisition and space operations jobs dating back to 1976. He has had careers in the U.S. Air Force, National Reconnaissance Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He is currently a consultant, the director of the Office of Space Commerce and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Mark, it's all yours. Thank you. Thank you Victoria. Good morning, afternoon and I guess evening everyone. Thanks once again to Secure World Foundation for putting together a great virtual event. The big thing I miss about gathering at your DC headquarters are your great receptions and the opportunity to talk to old friends and to make new acquaintances. Keep doing what you're doing please. Because we're here to mark the 10th anniversary of the Space Data Association I'd like to spend a few minutes looking back before actually doing what Victoria asked us to do by looking forward. One of the highlights of my NOAA career was that we were the first government agency to join the Space Data Association. After several meetings at the working level senior SDA officials soon found themselves in the office of the NOAA administrator at the time Dr. Kathy Sullivan. Kathy certainly understood the value of safe space operations because on three separate occasions she was an orbiting space object herself. So for NOAA joining SDA was a no-brainer. Despite the wheels of government turning slowly NOAA became an SDA member finally in May 2012. Shortly afterwards NASA joined. Shortly after NASA NOAA's European mission partner UMetSat asked NOAA if they should join as well. I'll summarize our conversation as one in which I said you're crazy if you don't join. In the eight years that NOAA has been an SDA member NOAA had great success using the capabilities that SDI and the AGI Commercial Space Operations Center provided for space flight safety of the NOAA geostationary weather satellite constellation called GOES. The dedicated and hardworking people at the 18th Space Control Squadron are at the limit of their capabilities to keep up with the rate at which commercial space operators are changing the space scape to coin a phrase of near-earth orbit. SDA through their operational partners were able to relieve a huge load off the 18th in especially the geostationary orbit regime. The accuracy of the observations combined with the confidence of SDA members dramatically improved geostationary operations. Here are some examples from NOAA's experience. Before transitioning to the SDA for primary geostationary support NOAA received during a two-year period over 17,000 conjunction warnings for its four GOES satellites. That's 21 warnings per day if you're playing along at home. In the last two years of relying on comspot warnings NOAA has received exactly one warning. I can't even begin to fathom how much critical weather data would have been lost if NOAA had taken GOES satellites offline to perform needless collision avoidance maneuvers for even half of those 17,000 warnings. NOAA operates its eastern satellite GOES east at 75 degrees west longitude. Occupying 75 west were Brazilian government communication satellites. Based on SDA's support NOAA and Brazil have safely operated up to four satellites within one half of a degree of each other since 2008. NOAA also shares its three other geostationary slots with at least one other spacecraft. Annual SDA member meetings have allowed NOAA to learn in advance of new neighbors moving into their geostationary positions and to begin early operational co-location planning. I could talk all day about how NOAA's membership in SDA has enabled their mission. However the task at hand is to look five years into the future. We have talked about the future of SSA and space flight safety in the Department of Commerce Office of Space Commerce on almost a daily basis since the release of Space Policy Directive 3 in June 2018 and of course for many years earlier in international and domestic settings. As a matter of fact, judging from Pascal's charts, he could have written SPB3. The clear objective is to transition the commercial and international SSA mission from the U.S. Department of Defense to the Department of Commerce. SPB3 mandates that this transfer take place by 2024. According to NASA and ESA statistics, it took about four years to increase the number of active satellites from about 2,000 to today's erupt total of 3,000. We are looking at adding another 1,000 in just this year alone and the number will accelerate every year in the future. So by 2025, very conservative estimates predict anywhere from 10 to 15,000 new active satellites if just a handful of companies come close to their projected launch schedules. The numbers tell just a small part of the story. Many of these large constellation operators will be constantly launching in the orbiting satellites. So there will be a large number of satellites always going up and always coming down and passing through numerous operational orbits. New low thrust propulsion systems and maneuvering by differential drag make traditional conjunction analysis techniques pretty much incompatible with how operators are flying satellites today. We are already seeing new commercial missions emerge. Satellite servicing, commercial human spaceflight, space tourism, and missions beyond geostationary orbit just to name a few. We need help from the commercial operators as well. They need to make it easier for the SSA infrastructure to find and catalog their satellites. They need to tell us what they're going to do and when they're going to do it. We need a new and unprecedented level of transparency including I think redefining traditional definitions and boundaries of proprietary information. At the very least operators perhaps even competitors need to talk to each other in the coming era where there will be more conjunctions between active satellites than between satellites and debris. The best way and perhaps the only way to maintain and improve safe operations is to enable industry itself to quickly develop and implement a new SSA infrastructure within the commerce industry partnership. The space sector is much more able to adapt quickly to a changing environment than any government agency. We need improved sensors that reduce position errors to the minimum amount possible. We need conjunction assessment tools that keep up with satellite design and operations. We need to automate as much of the spaceflight safety infrastructure as possible using every tool at our disposal. We are establishing a cloud-based open architecture data repository for commercial space operators under a light touch level of supervision and standards to manage safe spaceflight operations and to develop new tools and techniques in a collaborative sandbox on the cloud. SBD-3 requires us to offer a basic service free of charge and to enable private industry to develop and market advanced services to companies performing complex space operations. I'll conclude by saying that I'm glad I went first because I want to hear from industry and our international partners present today about how they do the next five years so that we in space commerce can keep up with them. Thanks very much. Thank you, Mark. That was a great kickoff to our panel. Our next speaker is Murnalini Eshpande. Murnalini has a master's degree in defense and strategic studies and started as a research fellow with the international strategic and security studies program in Naya, Bangalore until 2019. She was briefly associated with the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. Currently she's pursuing her plans for a PhD in the field of space security and policy. Murnalini, take it away. Thank you, Victoria. I hope I'm audible. Yes, we can hear you great. Yeah. At the outset, I would like to thank the secure world foundation for giving me this opportunity to provide an Indian perspective on today's topic. Because of the time constraint, I'm going to drive straight into it. In recent years, India's space activities have seen an increase in both magnitude and frequency. India's space budget this year is in the region of 1.8 billion dollars and India currently has a fleet of 64 active satellites. Today, India launches 10 to 12 satellites per year. This capacity is likely to increase in the future. In addition to deep space missions and human space flight, India has also planned the space docking experiment in the near future. The government has also provided separate funds to launch vehicle production to cater to domestic and commercial launches. Steps have been taken to get private players and startups to invest in space. Now, a robust space program of this nature obviously necessitates an equally robust SSA capability. India continues to be dependent on foreign data for its SSA needs. There have been instances in the past where India has temporarily lost track of its satellite due to mission related causes and had to obtain services of friendly agencies to locate them. India regularly uses the NORAD data to perform the collision avoidance analysis prior to each launch. Based on the NORAD TLEs, the Indian space research organization has developed various mathematical models to predict and evaluate the trajectory of reentering spacecrafts and rocket bodies. In addition to this, ISRO has also developed several models to study the evolution of space debris environment, collision probability analysis and reentry predictions. A fever to broadly classify components of SSA into data collection, data fusion, analytics and decision-making tools. It would seem that until recently India has been solely focusing on the analytics and decision-making tool components while primarily relying on foreign data. However, in recent years India has made an effort to build its own SSA capability. Presently, India has only one ground-based radar dedicated for SSA for the multi-object tracking radar commissioned in 2015 is currently used for space debris analysis in the powered and orbital phases during satellite launches and reentry prediction of debris. In addition to the MOTR, India also hosts a number of optical telescope facilities on its mainland. These telescope facilities fall under the ages of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the primary focus is astronomical observations. However, a few of the telescopes from these observatories have been used to track satellites on a need basis. Now in 2019 ISRO set up a directorate of space, situational awareness and management. The activities mandated to be taken by the DSSAM include protection of Indian space satellites, assimilate and analyze tracking data of inactive satellites from indigenous observation facilities, enable research activities pertaining to active debris removal, space debris modeling and mitigation. For countries like India who are still developing their SSA capabilities, there will always be trade-offs between more data collection and theory-based prediction algorithms. Therefore, cooperation and sharing of SSA data is most favorable. In June 2020, ISRO signed a MOU with the Aryabatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, ARIES to facilitate the establishment of optical telescope facilities for tracking space objects and to promote studies related to space weather, astrophysics and near-Earth objects. In addition to this, ISRO has also signed a MOU with the University of Texas to enable collaboration with respect to SSA activities. Actionable data sharing with other space-faring entities, nations and independent repositories would only enhance India's current capabilities with respect to satellite orbit determination, conjunction assessment, collision avoidance and satellite anomaly detection. Reciprocity is fundamental to cooperation and collaboration and India has undertaken substantial efforts to expand the scope of its current SSA activities. The consequences of activities in space are inherently international and it is important to ensure equitable access to the benefits of exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. Achieving long-term sustainability in space would require a global effort towards augmenting current space debris mitigation and space debris removal techniques, cataloging of space objects and most importantly sharing of information. Active debris removal techniques and on-orbit servicing involve rendezvous and proximity maneuvering. Recently, the deployment of Russia's space-based anti-satellite weapon raised red flags in the international community. Today, it is easy to detect an international maneuver in space. However, the time required to catalog it is still longer than desired. Similarly, sensors are able to detect maneuvers in space but often the intentions of such operations are not clear, are difficult to determine. Unexpected orbital behavior can be misconstrued as belligerent, giving room for misperceptions and misunderstandings. On a global level, this underscores the vital need to develop and establish international norms for response behavior in space. Unpredictable movements in space will only fuel misperceptions and therefore information sharing and engagement and cooperation between space-faring nations becomes important. This calls for a comprehensive and holistic approach to SSA, where technical tracking and monitoring is complemented with intelligent gathering diplomacy and strategic dialogue tools for cooperation. Developing international norms that clearly define what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in space is necessary. The effectiveness of military operations too in space is very much dependent on the development of these norms. In 2018, during an SSA workshop by the Secure World Foundation and NIAs, the importance of cross-culture communication was highlighted. It was reiterated again during the 60-second session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2019. Along with transparency in data sharing and increased accuracy of data, practicing culture and when communicating with other operators will go a long way in mitigating threat perceptions and avoiding access. Lastly, the growing role of private players in the space arena cannot be overlooked and needs to be complemented with the development of domestic space policies that would ensure that private satellite operators adhere to the global space sustainability standards by possessing thorough and robust collision avoidance, data sharing, and debris mitigation strategies. Economic growth in the space sector should not be at the cost of lack sustainability measures. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, Moonlee. That was really good at insights. I'm so glad to have an Indian perspective or an Indian perspective. All right. Our next speaker is Mark Dickinson. Mark joined NMARSAT in 2000 and is currently their Vice President of Space Segment and Deputy CTO. He is NMARSAT's Executive Director on the SDA and was the Association's Chairman from March 2017 until September 2019. Mark. Thank you very much, Victoria. And thank you for Secura Foundation for running this very interesting webinar. And thank you all to Pascal, who I thought did a great job in presenting the SDA. So I'm not going to repeat what he said. I thought I'll take a slightly different approach to looking at this issue and actually rather than just look back over the last 10 years, look back actually over the last 180 years and see what lessons we can learn from the development of the collision regulations for the sea and how they could be and those lessons could be applied and how they're relevant to what we're looking at today. And in particularly how technology is really a disruptor and how we need to have a framework that can adapt to to this new technologies as it comes along. So going back to 1840, a long time ago, 180 years ago, there weren't there were no collision regulations for vessels at sea. Basically you trusted people to know they know how to sail, they knew where the wind was, you knew that vessels could only sail at that time and that you couldn't sail into the wind and therefore people could make educated guesses about what was going to happen to avoid collisions. But collisions did happen. Then some technology came along which really was a disruptor. The invention of steam powered vessels and how these could actually sail now through the wind directly into the wind which is never possible before. And now collisions took on a collision avoidance, took on a whole new different concept. People realized that the assumptions that they had before were no longer relevant. And in mid-1840s a trinty house in London developed a set of collision regulations, essentially what's known today is you pass port side to port side as a framework for how people can avoid these collisions. And a couple years later they also realized they needed to deploy some conventions around using lights to indicate where vessels were and importantly which direction vessels are moving in. Unfortunately as is the case with regulations like this or essentially almost treat as recommendations they weren't really weren't really enforced in any serious manner. And there were they continued to be a number of serious collisions and in fact there was a major one actually in River Thames in London in 1878 I think it was where actually 700 people lost their lives in the Julian collision and it was those big events which actually forced people to have some enforcement behind these regulations. And I think the parallel here for spaces is really important. We want to avoid having a major event which we react to subsequently. We want to be able to be proactive here rather than reactive. Otherwise as has been pointed out if we pollute various orbital regimes it's going to cause us long-term problems and there's problems are for everyone. Then it really wasn't until the 1970s that the IMO introduced the what's known as the collision regulations at sea which were implemented in the late 70s in 1977 and the administration of those regulations were passed through the local administrations. And those administrations can be fought a bit like the space agencies who are looking to implement the recommendations that we have today for collision avoidance and best practice for satellite operations. I checked on Wikipedia just a couple days ago and there are currently 61 space agencies around the world who have obligations around satellite operations and I think that really highlights that this is a true international issue that needs to be managed. No one single entity can do it all and it's about having administrations who have the ability to oversight and enforce these recommendations and regulations. And we've seen on the shipping side the development of AIS. This is technology to allow people to be able to see in an open source way where vessels are and where they're heading to and various details about it. And that information has helped greatly in the management of where shipping goes and has helped reduce collisions. And now shipping is looking at things like autonomous shipping and the IMO will now need to look at about how they manage things like redundancy on board and sensors that are required to manage autonomous shipping. I think a number of these points have strong parallels to the issues that we face today. Technology is a disruptor. We've seen and I think the new space here now with constellations, with CubeSats, with on-orbit servicing, these are all new exciting innovations that are happening in the space and we need a framework that allows the safe operations for this innovation to make sure that we don't cause collisions or cause a pollution of the space environment because we need the space environment to be operational for the forever and we can't cause great lots of pollution now because it's not going to be easy to clean up. We do need, as Pascal has highlighted, we need the ability to have knowledge about where satellites are and what their intentions are in terms of where they're going to be in the future to allow effective mitigation measures and has been highlighted. There's new technology there around low-plus systems, how they need to be managed and how they need to be modeled to make sure that we can effectively perform conjunction assessments. I think we really, I think the onus and us is to be proactive here. We don't want the equivalent of a large collision at sea to force us in space to have to tidy up after ourselves. This is something we should take seriously, we take very seriously now and have enforcement measures to make sure that people are obeying by the regulations. We should use science and engineering as best we can to guide what those regulations should be. We need to have a way of measuring risk in a common way to make sure that we're making intelligent assessments of where the risk lies. I think we also need to look at what technology there's a huge amount of technology that the commercial sector has, whether it's SSA sensors or whether it's ability to be able to provide information regarding where an asset is and what's its intention in the future, the equivalent to AIS or space. It's capabilities like that, that when we fuse together we'll be able to mitigate and provide a safe operational environment. I think government's role is vital in this. Just as the coast guards maintain the safety of the sea, we need governments to also maintain space and agencies to maintain safety in orbit, but they for that they need as well as their own sensors, they need to be able to take sensor data from many sources, commercial, government and from operators. This isn't something that we can wait years to do, this is something we need to act upon quickly, otherwise we're going to be looking back in five years time wishing we had done things now because we have caused a big problem for future generations to manage. Back to you Betoya. Thank you so much Mark and I was a really interesting look back to see you know what lessons can be learned from other shared domains, we are absolutely not reinventing the wheel of this discussion. Thank you. All right our next speaker is Regina Peltzis. Regina is a senior policy officer with the DLR Space Administration, Department of Space Situational Awareness, where she leads the German delegation to the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking or EUSST, co-chairs its decision-making body and handles studies on emerging issues at the intersection of space security, governance and infrastructure. Prior to joining DLR, Regina was an internal research fellow with ESA at the European Space Operations Center, Studies and Special Projects Division, focusing on the resilience of critical operations from a human systems integration perspective. Regina, take away. Thank you so much for the introduction Victoria and also for having us with you today and good afternoon to everyone and before I start and after Mark's, well not, well we can't be optimistic I guess at this point but nevertheless we'd like to extend our best wishes from EUSST to everyone at SDA today. Both of our initiatives address similar issues of safe, secure and sustainable orbital environment and we both have complementary approaches as you highlighted by either pooling data on spacecraft by operators in SDA or data from ground-based sensors of SSA in EUSST and of course we also share many of the same partners and organisations who either use or contribute to both of our efforts and so a very happy birthday to you from us. For the occasion today I'd like to share some thoughts on where we're at in Europe at this point in time and on the foreseeable future particularly from the vantage point of European Union space surveillance and tracking or EUSST and very briefly EUSST is a European framework based on a law that was issued in 2014 and it's going to be soon a programme for a multilateral capability in space situational awareness here. It's overseen by the European Union, the European Commission and it's implemented by a group of now eight member states in cooperation with the EU satellite centre and together we pool our existing sensors together and we share data through a dedicated platform and we use that to provide services including collision avoidance free of charge to currently to European users and right now Europe is experiencing a really interesting point in time it's a really crucial time for space in a juncture really. As many of you will have noticed when you perhaps observed the European Council recently we are in the process of finalising and ratifying a new multi-annual budget in Europe in the European Union which includes the space budget and with this we're also at the cusp of a new European Union space programme that's set to start next year and in addition to the big navigation and earth observation programmes Galileo Ignace and Copernicus the programme will also include two new so-called new security components which is government communications and SSA and SSA will be a successor programme of EOSST both for space security but also as an operational building block for future STM contributions from the European side. So this will be fleshed out further in the coming months and throughout the next year and this autumn is really important for us because of that and all of this on the ground is happening against a backdrop of our orbital domain undergoing changes that are not only profound but also very dynamic and completely unprecedented at this point. So what do we need to do in the next five years and I want to highlight three points that from our vantage point we believe need to be tackled in any multilateral setting in Europe but also absolutely beyond. First of all we need to ensure that we put in place adequate resources so we can actually implement what we set out to do in SSA. So financially these resources are to a great extent public in Europe rather than private investment at this stage in time but these means also include attention and dedication because compared to space applications such as Galileo or GPS which you can take if you switch on your phone or you could look at earth observation data from from various different sources. SSA today is simply not as tangible and directly experiential in people's everyday lives. So framing the issue that we face in orbit through the lens of space traffic management is very evocative and can help us as a community of operators and agencies and industry to make our case but it also highlights the fact that this is a really complex challenge and a really interdisciplinary area where we have an operational dimension but of course also need regulatory provisions. Second we need to work out ways of governance that bring those on board who are currently not engaged in the area of SSA yet but who wish to contribute because the problem we're looking at is so considerable and potentially protracted that there must be a place for everyone at the table who has expertise to bring which is not to say of course that everyone needs to have the full capability from sensor hardware churning out data to the algorithms and the services but with organizations such as SDA and EOSST we've seen two models for instance in the past five to ten years where we see how collaboration can work and how trust can be built between different and very heterogeneous actors. So in EOSST for instance we work with really diverse actors from SSA obscenters and sensors that are civilian, military, civilian military from commercial industry or academia so very varied and getting all of these different actors and interests under one roof and under one hat means constant and often painstakingly detailed dialogue but it also allows everyone to do what they do best and it allows us to tap into the entire ecosystem that we have at our hands here while at the same time preserving some fundamental interests in a security area that today cannot be met by one type of actor alone. Speaking of which security interests that's my third and final point whether you do SSA or STM or STC or SDA domain awareness traffic coordination whatever we want to call it at this point we need to be really crystal clear about where our security concerns are specifically and where if you will safety of flight stops and where security starts and I'm speaking here of course from an institutional agency perspective although of course there's also as we've heard sensitive data that private operators would wish to protect and only share in a certain defined circle and this not only relates to data sharing and data policy but it also relates to sensor ownership and control and who has access to certain aspects of the ground infrastructure and it's very easy to say but the reality today is that we do still have a very varied security architecture globally and especially multilaterally very different configurations and this is important especially as we branch out to collaborate across the entire spectrum of partners who on the one hand have operational legacies of decades with maneuverable assets in orbit and on the other hand of the spectrum who have no satellites perhaps but still something valid to contribute to the to the domain of SSA and STM and that would allow us to well if we articulate it and really pinpoint it those aspects that truly merit protection from an individual actor's security perspective then that means that beyond that threshold everyone can do their job with the broadest possible application and transparency and with this I conclude and look forward to your question thank you thank you so much Regina it was really really great to hear the parallels between STA the USST and looking forward to hearing more from your perspective during the Q&A. Our last speaker is Dan Ultrami he is the director of AGI's Center for Space Standards and Innovation Program Manager of the Space Data Association Analyst and Space Policy Expert AGI's Commercial Space Operations Center Technical Author Founder and Administrator of the Space Safety Coalition which Secure World is happy to have signed on to as well and the author of numerous international space standards and best practices Dan Dan you're up can you hear me now we can hear you now great thank you sorry about that thanks Victoria my thanks to Secure World Foundation for inviting me to speak at this important event marking the 10-year anniversary of safety flight operations at the Space Data Center this is a truly remarkable accomplishment from my perspective and the many pioneering achievements of the SDC that Pascal highlighted earlier are truly noteworthy. While I serve as a program manager of the SDC at AGI my role in this panel is a bit broader than the SDC in that I also represent the Space Safety Coalition or SSC a lot of acronyms going on here. The SSC is an industry formed entity that endorses and strives to implement not only international treaties guidelines and standards but additionally to aspire to even more stringent levels of compliance and safety. With four new SSC endorses including two recently from Asia our participating set of space entities has quickly expanded to 44. This SSC initiative continues to resonate well across the space community. I'll put in my shameless plug here for the SSC which is that you can find more information out about the Space Safety Coalition at spaceafety.org and we'd love to have your participation. When you consider an aggregate the commercially self-formed space data association paid for entirely by the commercial and government operators that participate in the SDA services as well as the commercially formed SSC and the additional space safety initiatives and best practices championed by ISOA and SIA and CSF and others you can gain an appreciation for the positive flight safety energy that the commercial space industry is bringing to the long-term sustainability of our space activities. Because in truth our international treaties guidelines and standards are struggling to keep up with the explosive growth and technical innovations of today's space economy and the countless ways that it is addressing human needs and activities especially now during the pandemic. Treaties are designed to be broad agreements among state actors with top-level normative content that is designed to be interpreted and instantiated by national laws by the countries that have ratified those treaties. The recent adoption last year of 21 new LTS guidelines is also a very positive step forward but it will take law and policymakers time to implement this guidance across the space enterprise via top-down regulations. This is where the commercial space industry can and already has come in to capture, promote, and implement aspirational best practices through commercial self-formed entities such as the SDA and SSC as a part of that implementation and in advance of legal governance. Now if we could start a video please. It is an exciting time with the much discussed large constellations now well underway. We recently updated our CSSI statistics and associated video we posted in January 2020 depicting all of the spacecraft that have been applied for through the FCC and or ITU. In the space of a few years Planet, SpaceX, and OneWeb have recently grown to operate a quarter or 751 of today's 3,000 active spacecraft population. In this new version of the video we depict the 107,641 spacecraft that have been applied for through 2029 to be operated by up to 68 large constellation operators. Now four of these large constellation operators comprise over 90 percent of all of these large constellation applications and US and UK space companies account for about 95 percent of all large constellation spacecraft applied for. But everyone wonders the basic question here. What portion of these applications are quote-unquote real actually leading to operational spacecraft and also what will that realize population mean for space situational awareness or SSA and space traffic coordination and management or STCM and collision risk. There's no doubt that large constellations will have and in fact already have had a dramatic impact on SSA and STCM. Within 10 years we can expect up to two and a half million close calls per year in the most congested orbital regimes leading to over 40 collisions annually if these threats are not effectively managed and mitigated. Stop the video please thank you. Having participated in designing developing and operating flight safety systems for many years I can attest to a human tendency to be proud of accomplishing the rollout of the space safety system without paying sufficient attention to whether it provides on a sustained basis comprehensive accurate and timely answers. This upcoming large constellation environment points to the need for automated collision avoidance systems but in like manner it can be all too easy to assemble an autonomous avoidance system without ensuring that it is effective in the operational context. Our focus needs to be on ensuring that SSA and STCM capabilities and services not only exist and are accessible but also effective. Space safety is comprised of a long chain of components in my opinion and a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. In order to be effective we need to think about the especially big gaps we have in our current processes. There are plenty of ways to strengthen this chain for example by bringing advanced algorithms and analytics from the commercial and academic arenas to bear in the SSA and STM environment. These can augment or replace some of today's SSA processes to eliminate unnecessary simplifications and faulty assumptions while enhancing overall SSA service level availability timeliness accuracy and completeness. If you haven't read last week's Washington Post article by Chris Davenport I recommend it to you. We need to get past our current US STCM log jam and quickly transition advanced capabilities and analytics into operations for safety of flight. If you listen closely to Pascal's keynote remarks you'll have noted how a central tenet of the SDA is that of providing the framework for secure legally protected pooling of proprietary space data for the express purpose of promoting the safe and efficient use of space. Today we have far too many stovepiped SSA and spacecraft operation systems where the global aggregate set of space data is either not shared not used or not used effectively. Space safety can be dramatically improved if we open up the floodgates on space data in a crowdsourcing approach alleviating some of today's stovepipe SSA processes. In summary we need to take a holistic approach to realizing LTS. It's not just about treaties guidelines and standards it's all of those plus commercial best practices with aspirational goals of not only meeting but exceeding minimum consensus requirements. The time to address the many gaps in our LTS strategies is now especially in view of our ever-increasing use of space. Thanks and I look forward to your questions. Thank you Dan. Okay I'd like to welcome the panel back if you guys could all turn your cameras back on. Thank you. So we have quite a bit of questions in the Q but I want to start off by just you know oftentimes we've kind of used as a say an STM interchangeably but they are obviously very different. I'm curious to know from the panel's perspective how do you envision a space traffic management regime looking in the next five years or so? Will it look like now but even more so? Will you have maybe regional hubs of excellence? Will it be entirely commercial? And how do you incorporate new actors in whatever this STM regime and the being? Any thoughts in the panel? I could start. Okay I'll start with Dan and then go into Mark Mahlon. Yeah I actually yeah I was looking at this question in earnest here and starting an answer to it but I think in actuality the ST and just to address the lingo a bit I recently drafted up a proposed standard for space traffic coordination and management to address and reach out to the international community recognizing that coordination and management are parts of what various countries focus on. So STC MIC is an inclusive term. I'd like to promote that to the to the community and so what does an STCM thing look like in the next five years? I would say that we have a running start with the Space Data Association. We have come up with a framework that has been effective now for a decade. I think that this framework is something that everyone can look at and embrace and look to crowdsource data into that framework. I think it's also a good model for the inevitable multiple STCM centers I think that will have amongst like-minded countries and like-minded companies for a while. Maybe in the long term there'll be some vision of a more centralized international thing but I think for quite a long time we're going to have the countries providing an STCM system that meets their needs. Thanks. Thank you dad. Okay Mark Mahon and then Regina I think wanted to add something. Yeah we certainly have the same sort of vision in space commerce and part of I mentioned earlier that we're setting up in the cloud-based OADR what we're calling a sandbox and we're encouraging any and all to basically play in the sandbox and we're looking at that capability as a means to develop new algorithms as a means of evaluating new data sources and do it in a collaborative and collegial environment where when something is ready for for crime time as a new tool it will go through some sort of peer review and then be put into the operational system. We see a lot of parallels with how we do weather forecasting today as a matter of fact we've spent a lot of time talking over these ideas with the national weather service. One of the best approaches to use different data sources and different algorithms is what the weather world calls ensemble modeling and probably the best example of that is if you look at a plot of a hurricane you see all of the paths in what is affectionately called the spaghetti models. Well it turns out that for the life of a Atlantic hurricane forecasters use something like 14 different models and some are more effective at the beginning of the storm some are more effective over open ocean some are more effective towards landfall. So ensemble modeling provide you with the best overall picture without having to decide which model and which forecast is the best because in fact they're all good at different times. So we see that as as a fundamental way of working through all the different data sources. Okay thank you Mark, Regina. Thanks, thanks Victoria. So our understanding is just to compliment our understanding is that you need SSA as a fundamental capability in order to do STM like you would do it for you would need it for other capabilities such as characterization which maybe is not or it's not for us right now a part of STM and since you asked how we maybe bring about or may bring in other directors who wish to contribute to this area we currently use a model where we split different functions not everyone is doing the entire capability not everyone's doing everything but we split our functions between different operational sensor and processing aspects and for instance not everyone who may have something to contribute to the domain wants to invest in a huge surveillance sensor. I mean we also don't need surveillance sensors which are hugely expensive we don't need them everywhere we have seen very new and interesting models in the past five to six years on on how they're different ways and even cheaper sensors but there's lots of different there's a huge mosaic and a huge puzzle of things that we need there should be something for everyone there's algorithms there's data processing software there are different sensor classes ranging from you know things that you can develop or you know that you need to develop over decades perhaps and others that you can procure off the shelf so I think if we understand SSAS as the fundamental building block to do STM and various other things then there's lots of ways that different actors can slot in. Thank you Regina. Any other thoughts on the panelists? No okay moving on to points is a lot of good questions in the queue I'm trying to get through as many of them as we can between now and the end of the session there's an interesting question specifically it's for Dan by be curious to hear any of the panelists take on this. Is there any threshold where the number of satellites in low-width orbit would make impossible make it impossible to operate because of so many collision warnings despite communicating the data? What's our what's our breaking point there? Yeah good question I think there is a workload that the operators can sustain which is driven by how many conjunction warnings they have and rather than answer the question directly I'm going to just offer that that workload you can then kind of flip the question around and say this is what we can sustain this is the resources we have and you can like you have a knob you can turn to control how many warnings you get and that's by trying to get more accurate orbits on your object and on the the offending object if you will the secondary that you might collide with this knob affects a change in how many warnings you have to sift through and it is a squared relationship which means if you you know if you double the number of warnings a double double your inaccuracy that means you have four times the warnings so it's a really sensitive knob if we can focus more on getting accurate orbits up front then we can control how many realistic risks and collision threats we have to sift through that's I think the focus yes there is a threshold if you will and I would again say it it goes back to what the operator can sustain but that in turn should be the driver for one of the other questions in the Q&A chat window which is how much you know how many collision risks there are and and how do we control that so so the the point being if we can if we can improve our risk we will dramatically allow ourselves to address those real collision threats and ignore the false ones if you will thanks thank you Dan Mark Dickinson yeah I was going to follow on from Dan's comment in terms of I think the answer to that is the more accurate we have the orbits and the more accurate we know the knowledge of the ephemerides for these objects will allow us to to run more effectively and it does come down so if an object is maneuverable then you have a way of getting out of the way if there's a conjunction that I think I see the problem coming is when objects which can't be maneuvered we can't mitigate the risk of collision there so it's important that we minimize the number of unmaneuverable objects as they are tidied up because if we get the if we have once we create more debris then we're going to have the the the concept of debris on debris and that's when it starts getting out of control while objects are maneuverable and you have knowledge about them and you have operator information and you have operators that can do something in response to a warning then that allows things to be managed once it gets out of control once you start having objects which are essentially either dead or have no maneuvering no maneuverable capability that's when things start getting very difficult to manage thank you mark and the other mark I believe one of that has yeah I was just going to raise raise the issue that mark just raised about how how we need to get better in tracking tracking debris on debris and or non-operational satellites and I think too that the threshold is somewhere that that we remember that that risk has two components it's not only the likelihood which we in this world measure is probability of collision there's also a consequence that's assigned to a particular risk and and on most days of the week I think two two u-cube sats colliding although the likelihood goes up because there's going to be so many of them the consequence isn't nearly as great as two two rocket bodies colliding or an active spacecraft and a rocket body colliding so I think if we if we calibrate the resources that we have and that we anticipate that that will have and start to factor in the consequence component we may be able to do a more efficient job Victoria you want to jump in oh yeah yeah sorry yeah I just wanted to dovetail on on something the first mark was bringing up is that you know we will have a lot of collisions and and close approaches and especially moving forward I do have some analysis we've done which looks at today the the collision risk as a function of is it active on active is it active on inactive or is it debris on debris which which the first mark mark was bringing up as we go into this new space era those statistics are going to dramatically change yes there are debris on debris up there and they're serious and you can talk to Darren McKnight for example to see some of the very serious risks we face but as we get all these many more active spacecraft up there we're going to be driven by active on inactive and active on active which drives the need for a comprehensive stcm system where data exchange is the fundamental currency thanks thank you Dan there's a question specifically for the stc folks we go into um stc currently uses data from the owner operators the 18th and solicit track but given the growing commercial ssa capabilities are there any plans to use data from other sources in the future i.e commercial catalogs or observations and so what time frame any of the stc folks want to take that one yeah so i can unless Pascal is online and he would like to so yeah that's something we have looked at in the past we've looked at fusing third-party catalogs into stc which is technically possible we have we've typically hit an issue regarding how we we fund that how we source because most commercial operators obviously at their commercial business they want money for their sensor information to be put into the system and we have it we have found we have found being able to get all our members to agree to fund that system to bring in that data um logistically reasonably challenging to do um it's something that we certainly aspire to um we all agree that the fusing of the data and the more the more data the better is something that would be of benefit um what we do see is we are supporting certainly all the the government initiatives and the agency initiatives like e-u-s-s-t and the 18th in terms of providing our data to them and and allowing them to to fuse their data with it and i think it's important that when for example department of commerce will make pick up this activity that they're able to be able to take sensor data from many different commercial providers and into and perform perform that fusing activity um and i think that's it's a bit a bit like my um analogy back to the maritime world um you have agent you have government agencies make maintaining the maritime spacing for example uh and they use sensor data whether it's a is data or other sensor data that they confuse together to be able to provide that management of traffic lane segregation for example so that's how that's way the way we see it going forward thank you mark anyone else in sdc want to add to that okay looks like we're good okay another urgent question we focused a lot on the ssa systems and stm systems that we have currently looking specifically at earth orbit but as brought out there is a growing interest in sys lunar issues um as nations look toward a more permanent robust sys lunar and lunar presence how do we build a comprehensive international ssa or stm infrastructure for creatures at space missions and uh mark mahalin already popped up his hand so mark okay i admit i was looking ahead at the questions earlier um i'll just um i'll just point out one one aspect that um that is beginning to happen and that is an awareness of the uh the hazards of space weather especially as you go beyond geostationary orbit and uh we've had um we've had several uh several new companies uh come to us and uh talk about that kind of thing so just just a couple of examples is that um the uh emerging uh commercial human space flight and space tourism industry really needs to understand and use space weather um you certainly don't don't want to send up a bunch of space tourists right in the middle of a solar flare uh because they won't be in such good shape when they come back um also um with uh the emerging of uh commercial space stations uh perhaps uh permanent bases on the moon then you create problems of how do you protect those people um so we've had um again i mentioned uh companies uh who want to use space weather data to do things like work with industry that uh are trying to design new spacesuits and materials for space habitats if you envision um for example a commercial lunar base uh with a whole bunch of people out on their lunar buggies if if the solar flare starts heading towards earth you have eight minutes to to get uh presumably inside your shelter that protects you uh if you're walking around on the moon or in your buggy uh you basically have no protection so there's there's companies that are starting to take a look at that aspect um so that's that's kind of a emerging emerging business model uh that's uh coming out of the desire to go beyond earth orbit and to uh to do that successfully and uh and safely you really need to design better materials that protect your people thank you mark any other thoughts from the panelists um well there's one other question i thought was pretty interesting um when we talk about ssa considerations and issues i think we tend naturally to focus on the technical and engineering aspects but of course information is only as good as what we do with it and this question gets the heart of that um one other issue that doesn't get discussed is what happens when new sensors come online more objects will be tracked driving more conjunction warnings how do operators react to more warnings the objects were already there they just didn't know about them the risk has not changed necessarily that's the awareness of that risk uh dan yeah and so i i tried to lay the groundwork on an earlier response i don't know if i did it well but the point is that i think operators are especially in certain orbit regimes are already swimming in alerts um and and so now if you on top of that add maybe 10 times the number of active spacecraft and then improve the knowledge of things that are already up there by perhaps a factor of 10 you're looking at in certain orbits a hundredfold increase in conjunction risk and therefore conjunction notifications and things people have to sit through so again it's kind of the same answer i brought up before is that um we need to have more accurate data like dramatically improved data quality and better metrics and algorithms to assess that not only the the collision uh probability but also as as mark mulholland pointed out the consequence of that and factor that into the equations to get something that's i think sustainable and something we we can operate um for spacecraft operators thanks thanks dan uh both marks want to add something here let's go with mark dickinson and then mark mulholland i was going to form yeah a point that dan was making there and in more sensor information should allow you to have more accurate orbit knowledge and what more accurate orbit knowledge should allow you to do is essentially have less warnings because you're then you can make your conjunction uh uncertainty smaller so by adding to dan dan's points correct more objects that is going you can see a cascade effect there but the fact of adding more sensor data shouldn't more sensors shouldn't be seen as a negative it will be positive in a sense that it will hopefully allow cross-calibration of other sensors and and lower uncertainties regarding orbit knowledge and from that will allow you to make more to react to the really meaningful conjunction events rather than ones which may be uh the misdistance is actually far bigger than what you would normally perform a in the voids maneuver for thank you uh other mark okay i was just going to add that uh this uh emerging capability uh also plays right into the uh the academic and science work done in debris characterization and again that that gets into the uh the overall risk management realm uh so just to come up with a short example if i'm driving down the road and i see an object a half a mile in front of me i'd really like to know whether it's a plastic grocery bag or a leaf spring off a tractor trailer because in each case knowing what the debris is i'll take a different action so i think uh concurrent with uh bringing these new sensors and this new observational capability online there also has to be some a lot of work done in debris characterization uh because people will be making different operational decisions based on the uh the debris object thank you mark but Regina hi thanks yeah since uh mark you just mentioned characterization i think that's that's a crucial aspect if we have more accurate um ways to begin to understand to characterize events and not even just a tribute but to characterize and describe them and i think we uh we will avoid something that margolini um highlighted earlier when when she spoke um about mis misperceptions and mishaps because uh we we do since since mark don't know if it's mark uh well i was mark dickinson i don't know if it's one or two anymore but um you mentioned um these so-called normal accidents you know inevitable accidents in complex domains and some of these were caused by mishaps and misperception and we know this from other domains so it's uh yeah just wanted to highlight this and bring these points together thank you um margolini you want to jump in here yeah i wanted to ask uh uh sorry this this might be a bit of a digression but uh given the expertise of the rest of the panelists i wanted to ask a question related to uh government regulations for private uh industry promotion of encouragement of private industry we now all of us agree that government regulation should not be stifling given this background how how does one nation ensure promotion of private business while simultaneously abiding by global sustainability standards in space i'm any of the panelists can take on okay guys you have one minute who wants to take that one uh let's see um regina did you have your hand raised actually no i think i'm still on i'm super sorry still last one uh dan or mark yeah mahalen just to say this this again goes back to the space safety coalition and the commercial industry taking their own initiatives to promote long-term sustainability that's what we call a bottoms up approach there's also the top-down approach that the government comes up with with with which is laws and and so forth these things uh both contribute to long-term sustainability i i want to point out again back to mark mahalen's comment the the risk times consequence thing if you look at long-term sustainability the metrics you might use to quantify risk and and consequence can be different than those that an operator uses to assure their mission so there needs to be some sort of handshake there i'll see the rest of my time thanks thank you well mark mahalen gives his final remarks i'm going to share my screen one last time go ahead mark yeah um certainly there's um external influences from um for example the insurance industry uh and uh in the investment industry that can along with industry help to dictate uh proper norms of of behavior and again uh just to piggyback on what what dan said uh the best improvements in the history of the space program have almost always happened from the bottom up thank you mark um well we've got a little over time but i just wanted to thank our panel of experts for giving us such a thoughtful discussion of the issues surrounding the the safety of space light i'm sorry we weren't able to get it to everyone's questions but i think the fact that there was such a volume of interest shows that we have not thoroughly finished this conversation and with that i'd like to point out the secure world foundation is hosting the second summit for space sustainability we'll be going into some of these issues are raised today and a bunch more related to the future sustainable use of outer space um you can find out more information at our website swf summit.org it will be virtual September 9th through 11th so just a little over a month away and with that i thank you all for joining and i wish everyone a very good day thank you thank you very much thank you very much thanks everybody