 everyone and welcome to the first panel of today's summit where we will be focusing on the topic of understanding orbital capacity and continuing benefit from space. We are seeing an unprecedented level of satellite deployments and operations in low-worth orbit driven by the emergence of large satellite constellations primarily for communication services. This trend calls to attention our collective understanding and approach to managing the capacity of our orbital regions and the specific shells that we might use for various constellations and applications and how might that understanding of capacity and the tools we use to manage that capacity inform space operations business policy and regulation. That is the subject of the panel that we will have in the next hour or so. My name is Ian Christiansen and I'm the director of private sector programs for the Secure Well Foundation and I have the pleasure to serve as moderator for this panel. Before getting into that discussion however there's one important housekeeping item that I wish to cover questions and answers. Our panels at this summit throughout the next two days are very much discussion-based panels so we look forward to questions to come in from both our in-person and online audience. The way that questions will be managed is through the conference app Hova however you wish to pronounce it one of the other depending on depending on how you feel. So to access the app on your device of choice it's available in your app store for free in your app store of choice log on to the Wi-Fi here at the conference or at home. The conference Wi-Fi information is up there it's the SWF summit network the password is space logistics. Open up the Hova app and navigate into the excuse me if I'm the right person of the sessions here. So open Hova on your device of choice log in with the email you registered for the conference with and that's important if you don't use the email that you registered with the app won't recognize you. Register log in with that that email address select the conference session for which you'd should like to submit a question and answer a question we'll do the answering up here and then go ahead through the Q&A tool there submit the question we will see them up here and we will take those as they come in. I'd like to thank our conference technology speak sponsors space logistics and United Launch Alliance for the support of the technology we're using today and so with that I'd like to get into the panel itself the app also lists detailed bios for all of our speakers so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on speaker bios but it's going to briefly introduce our five speakers on this panel. Joanne Wheeler is director at Alden Legal where she specializes in communications satellite and space regulatory and policy matters she's also worked at Ofcom and the European Space Agency during her career. Anurit Umwari is the legal and company secretary for the Rwanda space agency where she leads the agency's role in the regulation of Rwandan space activities. Unfortunately Anurit had some visa processing delays so she has graciously agreed to join us as a online panelist today. John Janka to my right serves as the chief officer for global government affairs and regulatory at ViASAT Inc. He has a deep experience as a legal expert in the telecommunications media and technology sector. Richard Lanare's is co-director of the space systems laboratory at MIT and holds a Charles Stark Draper assistant professor position at MIT's department of astronautics or aeronautics and astronautics. Akhil Rao is an assistant professor of economics and an affiliate faculty in the environmental studies program at Middlebury College. So jump into the discussion now and to start this panel off I want to bring up an introductory video presentation via pre-recorded video from Professor Hugh Lewis who is the head of the astronautics research group at the University of Southampton here in the UK. Hugh is going to give us a little bit of context on the question of orbital carrying capacity. If we could cue the video please. Hello everyone I'm Hugh Lewis from the University of Southampton. I'm sorry I can't be with you in person. I've put together a short talk here to talk about orbital carrying capacity that I hope will illuminate some of the issues some of the challenges around the problem and I'm going to start really by asking you whether you are a glass half full kind of person or a glass half empty kind of person and the reason for asking you that is because I'm going to use this analogy through the slides I've got here for you and what I want you to do is to think about how this analogy a glass half full glass half empty might translate into our thinking about the near earth orbital environment. So if we take the approach that we're glass is half empty and perhaps what we can do is we can imagine the near earth orbital environment as an empty box and what we might want to be trying to do with this empty box is to fill it and we want to understand how many items we can place inside this box safely so that it doesn't overflow and we don't lose any of those those items and so if we follow this approach kind of glass is half empty therefore we can put more in and therefore we want to fill the box then what we end up doing is thinking about this as a as a packing type of problem. We want to find the the most efficient way of fitting as many items as we can into the box that represents the the low earth orbit environment and it works really well if we understand exactly what our items look like so here's some fruits if we perhaps understand that they might all be the same more or less the same size the same shape and so on we can really pack them into this box very very efficiently and we can get to the point where you know the box is completely full with as many objects in it as we can possibly get and not have any problems so we can you know safely transport our items of fruit around inside our box you know whatever it is we want to use this this for if the items are not the same if they differ in some way perhaps they differ in terms of their mass or in terms of their size or in terms of whether or not they have propulsion then we might want to think about a slightly different way of packing the box we might want to arrange the box so that similar items go in similar regions of our box you know whatever characteristics we're using we use those to determine where they should go and again it's you know it's it's an added complexity to our theme of trying to fit as many objects into this box as possible and the other thing that we've really got to be careful about is is that if we consider our items that can be different then of course some of them might be breakable some of them might be valuable some of those items might be a bit shiny so just because we can fit them all inside the box doesn't mean to say that they're all going to be safe or that use of the box is is suitable so taking the example of shiny objects you know we can understand that satellites in the sky can reflect sunlight and then can interfere with astronomy whether it being professional or amateur astronomy and so we've really got to be careful about our choices that we're making here with respect to not just filling the box but also what we're filling the box with another concern that we might want to take into account is the fact that any two people looking at this box might see different things they might count a different number of objects or see objects in slightly different ways look at them with respect to different characteristics we might have different ideas about how to pack the box how to fit as many objects into the boxes as possible so this leads us to some uncertainty into really how many items we might be able to fit into our box and then we've got to really start to think about the future generations okay because if we in our generation take the approach that we want to try and use the space as efficiently as possible put as many objects in it as we possibly can and still you know maintain that this idea of of being below a certain threshold below a certain carrying capacity then at some point we get close to that capacity and then how do we decide who gets to use the capacity that remains it's like you know who gets to take the last biscuit from from the plate what characteristics should we use to determine how that that space gets used up and so on so so the the idea is is really it's quite difficult if we start to think about that this box filling up and or in this case that the amount of space becoming less as we go through and then the other thing is if we if we put as many objects into the box as possible yes it might be below a certain capacity but isn't that going to be like a surfer trying to stay ahead of a breaking wave a wave that's trying it's best to to crash on top of the surfer the future generation would always have to be trying to stay ahead of that wave trying to prevent the the growth of the the debris population so let's come back to our box this analogy that we've I've been using so rather than seeing this box as an opportunity to to fill it why don't we see this box in in this state and and actually take the approach that we want to try and keep it as empty as possible because isn't it better to fill it with the the promise of future ideas rather than to fill it with our junk and and to take it to the point where there isn't much room for anything else so I come back to this analogy the glass is half full glass is half empty analogy so I'm a glass is half full kind of person and you know I want to see us and take that optimistic approach but to to to basically try and get to the point where we remove as many objects from the environment as possible we give the opportunities to the future generation and not a glass is half empty kind of person and I don't look at the orbital environment as this region that we want to try and fill so I hope that's given you some ideas to think about and with our panel discussion perhaps some questions that that might be raised and that we can talk about so thanks very much so if you're listening online thank you for that as a fantastic framing to the issues that we want to discuss here for the next hour or so and so I think what we want to do in the panel is unpack that box a little bit right and let's explore what do we mean when we say orbital capacity how might that be measured and how might that relate to an operational and regulatory context so we've prepared some questions for the panelists here and again there's an app please start thinking of questions as we get into later half the panel we'll want to see those from from you all so Joanne I'm going to start at that end of the row here with a question for you so as we've as has been mentioned we're seeing an unprecedented amount of satellites in the form of leo constellations being filed for through the national spectrum administrations how do we judge the realism of these findings of these filings and does the current regulatory framework have the capacity to manage this level of activity thank you very much Ian and it's a real pleasure to be here thank you very much to the secure world foundation and the space agency yes there is an unprecedented amount of satellites being licensed and there is an unprecedented amount of satellite filings being made and this is slowly leading to and I'm also a glass glass half full person a strict approach taken by regulators applying slightly tighter definitions of what we class as responsibility of states but this is not consistent across regulators there's no harmonized approach to this now let's be honest there is some reservation of spectrum without actual use there is sometimes a lack of realism but if I was to judge the realism of filings how would I do it well I would ask a series of questions to various people first of all I'm trying to take a coordinated approach first of all I'd ask a question to operators is such a large amount of spectrum if I'm going to completely fill Hughes box really necessary is this necessary to what you want to achieve what service you want to provide into the to your customers and clients what design changes could you actually make to help reduce the dependence on such a large number of the apples in the box for example do you really need them all then when I look at a business plan for a spectrum I will assess it in certain ways in regard to before bringing into use but even once it's brought into use the monitoring afterwards for example the feasibility of actually bringing in to use that system meeting IT requirements can that operator actually manufacture what they want to manufacture the supply chain for constellations is getting pretty heavily polluted there what about being able to launch the required number of satellites because the demand for launchers is also tightening again market is the market really there and where they think it is what about the feasibility of the technology where in Hughes box are the satellites going would they work in that to provide the the market with the services they need but it does the business plan stuck up does the financial plan stuck up can they raise the money they need and how would they compete with other other Leo constellations for example next I'd ask a question to the security services that might seem a bit strange but I've witnessed reservation spectrum without actual use from very small companies actually they're not very small companies they're sovereign states looking to block areas of spectrum and areas of Leo constellations but it wasn't evident until closer to bring into use therefore we need to be savvy and judge the realism of nuances that maybe we haven't really exercised properly before and the purpose of the spectrum filings in NGSO I'd ask questions for national administrations that are to use so many of you sitting in the audience what procedures policies and practices will you apply to judge the realism we're seeing it we are seeing a tightening up and off-com are a leading regulator in this regard but how do you assess the proof of efficient use of spectrum how do you evidence the launch and operation do you actually ask for contracts operation contracts business plans how do you assess whether the finance can be raised I'm seeing more monitoring as I mentioned after biu investors are also increasingly looking as to where filings are being made through which national administration then I'd also ask if there's a split of competencies to the national space agencies how will you look at your procedures in regard to the assessment of whether this can be brought into use etc how will you look at the use of spectrum now I've been involved luckily to be involved in the drafting of several national laws and policies around the world and and still am and it's only recently that national regulators are taking sustainability seriously 25 years ago it was it was it was not cool to be honest it was a bit geeky and I was one of those geeks and I'm proud of that but the focus now on sustainability is absolutely clear it's no longer just an issue of it's going to cost us more or we're going to race the bottom with regulators who have a light touch approach why why because it's gone into the culture of of of our understanding it's gone to the as the space agency would say the man who watches X factor your children are much more focused on sustainability than ever before and COP26 has done a lot to that but also because compliance with sustainability standards hit ESG requirements of investors and allow companies to raise finance investors are increasingly requiring a compelling ESG governance plan and looking at non-financial factors such as looking at material risks and growth of investment opportunities ESG sustainability matters to investors also compliance with sustainability requirements allows market access now the US have been leaders in this area for a long time saying that we will license you terrestrially if you meet sustainability requirements in other countries with your licensing and lastly of course international reputation so those three criterias are pretty game-changing now it's come to Ian's last question what regulatory challenges and risks does this pose with a long-term sustainability guidelines that we've heard about this morning already are fantastic to achieve international consensus it's taken 10 years things move but the incredibly important and I'm very proud of the UK sponsorship of these they set a stage there's a buck coming isn't there but they're not binding they need to be applied into national law and the licensing by the entities I've just been talking about but innovation and entrepreneurship doesn't wait for international law it doesn't always even wait for national law therefore a key challenge that we have is to look at how national laws actually implement the LTS guidelines we cannot do this in isolation we have to work internationally and take a holistic approach to regulation we also need to look at the skills and expertise across national regulators and share information and share I'm not going to use the word best practices effective practices and we need international collaboration so Peter Martin is his idea of the regulatory regulatory engagement is incredibly important we also need to learn from each other and how industry actually implement these standards to test the realism of the spectrum filings we also have a few tools that we can use we have international environmental law and we have already conservation use in on planet earth that we can use in space we need to protect the next generation of space activities as we protect the next generation of terrestrial activities we also have sustainability tools and there's been a lot of debate at IEDC and ISO in the in the last few days now recently I've worked with some of our excellent UK representatives to these standards organizations and done a gap analysis of what is missing in the standards you won't be surprised that there are very important things missing for example collision avoidance capabilities measuring mission and deorbit visual brightness particularly for our astronomers in the audience and the need for preserving our dark skies also for indigenous populations non-reflective surfaces separation of constellations etc close approach capture missions so linked to what I've just mentioned in regards to financial incentives market access and insurance incentives I would call an industry to help close those gaps and make sure that that international level can be implemented at national level and then implement into industry practices meeting investor insurance and and raising money linked to linked to these incentives it's really important to encourage investment cheaper insurance and sustainable behavior we need to create this ecosystem that's with appropriate incentives to make this happen and lastly we also need to first of all start with what is up there already and what do we actually mean by sustainable use easy thank you very much so thank you Joanne and maybe there are a number of points in there that we could expand on in our in our comments here so I think we'll reflect back on a lot of what you've raised as we go through this so on your read I think part of the the thread that Joanne was talking about is the complexity and the increasing number of actors in this system one of the types of new actors that we see are new regulatory actors as well so the Rwanda space agency for example is a relatively new regulatory actor as a relatively new space agency in fact can you tell us about what steps and measures you are taking in building regulatory capacity and process for space activities in Rwanda thank you so much here and thank you for allowing me to participate in this session today um perhaps I can start with a little bit about the Rwanda space program journey so initially space program has started as a part means under 193 authority until the establishment of Rwanda space agents in 2020 which means that Rwanda has had some skilled people in terms of space matters and the same speed we are transferred from Rura to Rwanda space agents to run it so it's uh I think it's it's a chance for Rwanda space agents to have or to want to have that kind of structure that help Rwanda space agents to start to meet the right people in place for example our chief technology officer is a report of CPM chapter four on satellite regulatory issues which means that he was he was what he was appointed for that because of his competence so uh secondary capacity ratings among our two priorities as Rwanda space agents because we want to develop program we want to develop to develop the our space sector so it's better to have the like the uh that work so that we can have the force uh the the force that are needed in the market another thing it's uh through the cooperation in the regional and international parties with senior mission uh as Rwanda space agents we have expected in different events workshop seminars that contribute to the capacity development uh for example this year we have expected different working groups established the Rwanda and the Ribo subcompteor corpus and and uh one of those working group was about the general exchanges of fuel potential Ribo modules activities in the exploration its rotation and transition and space resources um which means that through those participation it's where we gain the we gain much experience and the the best practice from from uh other different actors again we have participated in ITU WTTC of 2020 and have recently hosted the workshop in partnership with Gisowa Robo-Satellite Operators Associations uh together with other African space agents where satellite licensing framework and principles were part of the discussions so um again um being part of the global space community we have signed different international space international treaties um and we are in the process of that finding those so that so that can be part of our domestic flow so we again with the support of UNOSA we have started the drafting process of our national space law and we are aiming to complete it uh complete the process by this year so uh putting all those things together they are enough us to like to to have them uh like to have the experience and also to learn from different actors and also from the different international organization on the best practice in terms of the regulatory uh processes and legato framework in terms of the space activities so uh in some way that's what I can say what we are doing uh or what are the processes we are using in space activities in one thank you thank you Anya and so it's an interesting thing you know and part of our challenge is that we have mature space agencies and mature regulatory structures which have frameworks that have been developed and have to be adapted to this new environment and then there are opportunities for merging and new actors to design frameworks from the from the ground and I think part of our collective challenge in dealing with this this um context is is how to work within that in that contrast so um I'm going to turn to uh an operator perspective now so John Viassat has been very active on the topic of orbital carrying capacity over recent years can you share a little bit of a why and what your interest is sure very easy to answer I guess I'd start with the perspective that we don't think ourselves of ourselves as an operator we think of ourselves as a technology company company's been around for about 36 years and even before the founding of the company our founder and executive chairman was working on leo projects as part of earlier careers so you know over the course of that time period we have designed and built payloads for leo satellites some very big names you know we've built ground networks for leo systems some very big names you know we build user terminals for leo systems some very big names you know it probably isn't very well known but we do have some leo satellites in orbit so we see great promise for leo and we think we're just at the beginning of really being able to understand what can be done in low-worth orbit costs of access to space have dropped we have the ability to mass produce assets that can be launched into space in a way we couldn't and we think there's great potential for communications for earth observation earth sensing weather those types of things positioning navigation and timing which increasingly needs to be supplemented in low-worth orbit not just what's done with gps but in lower orbits defense security and we think that every nation in the world is going to be able to participate in this economy in a way they couldn't in the past so we're very excited about that and we want to be part of bringing those solutions to the world we envision partnering with governments with technology companies with operators to help make this all the reality and i think our our big concern is two fold one if you go back to hu's analogy and i hadn't thought about it this way until hu presented let's assume today there's a full glass of water which is opportunity everybody around the world should be able to take a sip from that glass of water and we shouldn't have one or two companies or one or two countries guzzling the entire glass and leaving everyone else thirsty so we have to figure out a way to coexist and to share that resource i agree with you that we need to figure out a way to use it efficiently to pack it efficiently but everybody has to be able to be part of that process and i agree with joanne that we shouldn't fill it all up today because we're not smart enough to know what's going to come in the future so we need to start thinking about ways to use the asset in a way that accommodates today's needs and tomorrow's needs and i saw something very recent that was enlightening to me espi in europe put together a very thoughtful paper and a very thoughtful slide deck and the way they depicted it really resonated with me if you think of low earth orbit is essentially a beaker you know what you put in affects how quickly you fill it up but also what tools you bring to bear determine how much you can put in there and there's a lot of debate these days about space traffic management and situational awareness and debris remediation those are all very important principles and important things to pursue but i don't think we know necessarily what are the most effective tools because we don't know how much we're working with and if we determine you know how big this cylinder is and how much we filled it up then we can figure out what to do to maximize the opportunities i personally believe that one of the most effective things we can do is facilitate more responsible satellite design and operation and if satellites are designed more efficiently to have less impact i think we're going to be able to put more in orbit and i also think the burdens on space situational awareness and space traffic management and even debris remediation will be lesser so a cruder way to look at it is let's not junk up space in the first instance let's be smart about what we put up and then figure out how to manage it and if you really think about this it makes good business sense and it's all really also is important for a matter of you know corporate and social responsibility so that's why we're as committed to these initiatives as we are all right well thank you and then we'll continue to uh to explain that so Richard something that was raised in in john's remarks just then was you know what is that the size of the box if you will how do we define what that cylinder is and we have you know colonel we actually have a question as well from the from the audience already submitted about you know can we put a number on that given current given current regulatory and technical conditions remain the same so you are amongst the research community that that is that is looking at how various concepts for defining caring capacity can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on and how you see these issues yeah definitely so definitely Hugh Lewis provided an excellent introduction to the topic Hugh has made significant contributions in this area so I'm honored to be part of this panel where he introduced so I like that analogy apples fitting in the box so one of the things we work on are two levels two different types of capacity intrinsic capacity which is the physical positioning of satellites on orbit given that you know where everything is and then risk based capacity which is a probabilistic calculation we're not sure where all the debris are there's lethal non-trackable debris up there we're not sure what the future is going to look like so there's a probabilistic element of capacity we work on both sides of this problem we've done some significant work on the intrinsic capacity so this is using orbital theory astro dynamics very fun math to calculate how many spherical objects can we pack on orbit now the calculation is not as simple as you might imagine maybe you might you know sort of take a first cut at this by looking at the volume in space and equally dividing that volume and saying okay well how big are my slots how big are you know the the regions that I want to fit satellites well let's subdivide that volume by the volume of each slot it's not that simple because we have orbital mechanics so Kepler has something to say about the problem and in one way to think about it is there's two numbers that bound that quantity the intrinsic capacity one of the numbers is the volume the sphere packing volume it's obviously not that the other number is if I consider one circular orbit right so one circular orbit at that shell and I subdivide that circular orbit in in degrees and the degrees are going to be the slot size so I subdivide that circular orbit let's say one degree slot size so that's 360 slots in one circular orbit it's obviously not that number because you can fit more than one circular orbit somewhere in between those two numbers we find what the intrinsic capacity is and it's a complicated number based on inclination and orbital characteristics so my group we do that calculation we have numbers that we've computed for the intrinsic capacity but that's not the capacity of low earth orbit because there's debris up there that we can't fit into neat slots there are knowledge of debris is probabilistic so I actually like to extend Hughes analogy of those apples now think about a second analogy a probabilistic analogy I have apples in my hand I have that same basket and I'm dropping the apples right so where the apples fall is somewhat probabilistic there might be a gust in the room so there's a sort of probability density function where I could expect each apple to fall now I want to figure out what sequence should I drop these apples so I have them fall in the basket and they don't touch each other that's the realistic analogy of orbital capacity and there's folks that are doing those kind of calculations those calculations are based on source sink models Monte Carlo simulations and heuristic codes our group we do that kind of calculation as well and we try to marry that calculation with an intrinsic capacity so going back to your question can we place a number on it well I'd say it's complicated and in some cases it actually might be irresponsible to place a number on it because it depends on so many factors it depends on how accurately you can avoid collisions it depends on your mission disposal rate so if you place a number and you don't nuance it with all of these other characteristics then companies might shoot for that number organizations might shoot for that number but they don't meet all the other requirements that they need to have that level of capacity mission disposal rate collision avoidance probability accuracy so we can compute numbers and we actually want we want to do is compute ranges of numbers and in the future hopefully regulators can look at the key parameters in those numbers and make sure in the filings that companies are achieving those parameters but to answer your question it's tricky but we do have numbers that we've computed but they depend on a lot of assumptions all right thank you for that so Akhil I'm gonna turn to you and the question I want to ask you is we've been talking about physical assessments of capacity you come from a different discipline you come from the economics discipline the behavioral science discipline can you tell us your perspective as you look at this from from your backgrounds are there competitive or economic factors that we might also consider as part of a capacity discussion so that was surprising so I would say that the physical factors obviously matter they do right you can't fit a size 10 foot into a size five shoe and we got to know how big the shoe is so that we can figure out if it fits or not so that's important but that's about where I think a lot of these terrestrial analogies that we're used to thinking about start to break down because the real binding constraint I think for how much stuff we can fit in orbit is the costs that we're willing to incur to put stuff into orbit I would say that the real metric of orbital carrying capacity unlike other terrestrial resources is a cost benefit test when we put things into orbit we are going to incur some costs as we keep things there we are going to incur some costs we're also going to be receiving some benefits do those benefits match or exceed the costs and that's a dynamic calculation that's going to be changing over time as technology changes it's going to be changing over time as the state of the orbital environment changes it's also going to be changing with competitive behavior so let me try to give you some examples here to build some intuition for how this might work right let's say that it costs a trillion dollars to launch any single satellite anywhere how many satellites are we going to launch it doesn't matter how big the shoe is or how big the box is a trillion dollars per satellite in today's economy are you kidding me like we're not going to launch anything right on the other hand let's say that we launched a satellite and it costs like 10 cents how many satellites can we fit in there well we're going to get pretty close to whatever those physical limits are and that's when the physical limits start to really bind now it's somewhere in between 10 cents and a trillion dollars to launch a satellite so we're probably going to launch some satellites but we're probably not going to get close to the physical limits anytime soon and you know that's maybe okay as we start to think about an era where commercial users are a dominant force in orbit we really need to think about these economic factors about costs and benefits what are the benefits that we get from having satellites in orbit who gets those benefits what are the costs we incur and how are those going to change as the environment gets filled with debris with lethal non-trackables it will become costlier to operate satellites there the number of satellites which pass the cost benefit test that individual operators are going to be doing is going to shrink and that's going to be true even if we have all the best guidance and control algorithms to tell us this is how you move the thing and so forth the other thing that I didn't really talk about too much here is competition right now let's say that we're talking about a commercial operator let's say that your revenues are starting to fall from maintaining satellites in orbit let's say that only one operator is able to make substantial revenues from being in orbit even if there's plenty of physical space not a lot of folks are going to be launching there the carrying capacity of that region will be greatly diminished and not because of a physical limitation because of an economic limitation competitive behavior or anti competitive behavior can absolutely drive how many satellites can stay in orbit in orbit a little bit different from terrestrial settings competitive and anti competitive behavior doesn't just have to be in terms of pricing strategies or product strategies it can also be in terms of how you place your objects what kinds of avoidance maneuvers you do if you are a large operator you have the power maybe not the inclination maybe not the willingness maybe even a responsibility to not do this but you have the power to use the way that you maneuver your satellites to make it prohibitively costly for others to enter that region whether or not they can physically fit there so this element this competitive element this economic element is something that we think about in many other settings like when we talk about fisheries regulation we think a lot about prices and costs and quantities when we talk about spectrum regulation on earth we think a lot about who's buying the spectrum in which auctions how much they're paying and what they're going to do with it are they going to be doing anti competitive mergers we think about this in orbit I don't think we have really started to think about this but these are absolutely critical factors that will drive how many satellites and whose satellites importantly can be in which locations thank you all right so we have a roughly a half hour left I see a good number of audience questions so please keep submitting them we won't get to them all but please keep submitting them and you can also of course upvote the ones that that you really want us to ask up here and so I'm going to weave start weaving some of those audience questions into our discussion here as we go and see where this journey takes us so on your read I'm going to come back to you so I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about your current practice for managing large constellations I was we're all aware there's been a particularly large filing that has come through Wanda for I believe 300 sorry I believe for 300 satellites in the filing now we've talked a little bit about how we evaluate the realism of those filings already but I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how you within Rwanda and your colleague agencies manage and look at these large constellations whether concerns might be reviewed during the licensing process eg space debris spectrum sharing those sorts of those sorts of things thank you so much um our current practice for managing a large constellations we have different bits that we we looked at but uh I'm going to highlight the key ones first of all our filing lessons process comply with the radio regulation on ITU which is the key regulation filing but in addition to that Rwanda considers different things in terms of filing process uh first of all we we we check the spectrum efficiency uh where we privilege the shared spectrum to the exclusive ones so if we want to to like to to have to manage the spectrum efficiency for for everyone like to be able or just to have the equal right in terms of the use of space so it's it's very important to like to to focus mainly on the shared spectrum compared to those exclusive one again we examine the if the operator will be will be using the space in the sponsored brief so in that case we we require the the capability of the operator in terms of debris mitigation as a based on the space debris mitigation guidelines of the container peaceful use of outer space so we we we want to ensure that that operator we will we um will use the space responsibly so he needs or he requires to show that he will he will be able to mitigate the space debris again we assist the financial department of the operators because we want to ensure the efficiency provision of services so it is very important to examine that because everyone can come and say that i'm able to do that but after a given period we will not be able to comply with all the requirements in terms of the capability in terms of the financial capability so it is very important to assess so as one of space agents we we we we focus on that so we have different things but those are the key ones in terms of the space sustainability that that we are focusing in terms of uh giving the right the fairing license to someone who in place of that thank you thank you so part of what i'm taking away from that answer is that for the spectrum side of this we have established metrics and processes for comparing against those metrics for the physical aspect of such a large consolation we don't necessarily have those metrics established as part of our regulatory process right so i'm going to ask a series of questions to the panelists here to kind of explore that thread a little bit about you know what it would mean to potentially have those sorts of metrics available so richard akhil for the two of you we've heard about several research efforts underway to define orbital care and capacity from physical attributes economic attributes what is needed to mature this work towards operational relevance and john if you want to jump in as well i'd be happy to see that yeah sure that's a good question i'll start because i think my response will probably dovetail with a comment from yours so the way i think about capacity is a manifold right and it's a manifold of capacity and risk so if you're willing to accept high levels of risk then there might be collisions on orbit that uh basically um the story satellites but you need to launch more satellites than you anticipate that you need so the risk level is really tied into this capacity question you can get higher capacity but it's going to be highly risky to do that and this comes from the probabilistic argument that we can't really bring debris down to zero because we can't track everything so there's still a small probability that there's debris up there that will destroy your satellite so it's a trade of risk versus capacity now the question is where do we fall on that risk curve we don't know yet right so there are other much more mature technology industries that we know of such as the car industry consumer electronics industry and there's a certain level of accepted risk in those industry you know how frequently does a laptop fail or a phone that i have to replace during warranty how frequently does that fail i'm not an economics person so i can't really do that study for for space but it's pretty clear from the physical uh sort of attributes of satellites that it is a manifold of capacity versus risk and i think regulators and folks that are trying to do that calculation will need to understand what risk level is acceptable is it acceptable that we will have five collisions next year do you think that's fine or do you think that the public is going to come back and say this is not acceptable um so that's the way that i view it and i'd love to hear how you guys view it too yeah i think uh that manifold perspective is very much how i would think about this as well um i might frame it maybe in terms of a different metric right risk and sort of willingness or ability to accept risk and you know in economics we talk a lot about willingness to pay or ability to pay when regulators make a determination about you know five percent picking a number out of a hat here five percent is an acceptable risk level anyone who was willing to accept a higher risk level they're going to have to rethink how they're making their mission how they're designing their trade space operationally so that they can get below that five percent threshold now maybe some of them can maybe some of them can't so when we do this we're going to be making a decision about who is using orbital space right we don't all have the same valuation of risk here and that's something i think for regulators to be sensitive to and to try to elicit these risk preferences right we need to understand who has what types of risk preferences and when we set these thresholds who is it that we're kind of zoning in to orbital space and who is it that we're zoning out uh i think a zoning framing is maybe another useful way to think about this in many parts of the world you know there's there's very strict zoning regulations about who goes where and when you make these zoning decisions you are setting in place land use patterns that will determine a lot of how that region evolves of who pays what costs to access the region and how they are able to use it or not able to use it right um i live in vermont and we have some very interesting zoning regulations there if you follow us property prices you'll know that vermont has recently it's it's gone straight to the moon right and in property price terms um but i think the other thing that we really need here is we need much better data collection right i mentioned that we need to elicit risk preferences we need to elicit a whole lot more than that we need to elicit a lot of economic data similar to how we collect data again i want to mention fisheries we have pretty great data on fisheries i could tell you you know with a few minutes at a computer like what is the average price received by a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico in a given month under a given condition i could do that i can't do that in space i've tried right we have very sort of rough aggregate data and we need to get much much better data so that we can gain a fuller picture of the these sorts of trade spaces yeah i guess i would i would say i think richards on the right track i think we have we all acknowledge we have more work to do but it's important we do it now the the rules the standards the norms that currently exist were developed for a very different time that doesn't mean they were wrong when they were adopted they were adopted based on what we knew and the data we had um and let me just try an analogy um you know there's a certain standard out there that's been used historically uh you know traditionally for geostationary satellites it's a collision risk metric you know and it's one in a thousand right and i kind of liken it to i'm american as you might guess by the accent right i come i come to to london and you know sometimes i cross the street without looking sometimes i don't look to the right even though it's painted on the street right i'm taking a chance if i do that once maybe i'm okay but if i keep doing it i'm probably going to get hit by a bus and that's what's starting to happen with these large constellations we're dealing with massive quantities of satellites and huge numbers of things that are called conjunctions which are if you will near misses in space and the standards that we're using to manage those risks are are based on a different era and i think we really need to sit down and understand you know how many times is somebody going to be crossing the street how close is the bus coming and do we need to do something different going forward you know some some notable experts have have said based on the data they've seen it's not a question of if it's a question of when we will start seeing collisions and i think we really need to understand how likely that is to occur and how many there are so i think we're on the right path there's a lot of excellent research out there and i think the best thing to move it forward is to get it out there get the models out let people poke at them and what that will do like it always occurs with science it'll improve our thinking it'll lead to better decisions one thing that troubles me though i've had discussions with with people in government about these issues and i think as as as peter mentioned at the beginning we've gone a long way in two years if you had this discussion two years ago pre covid everybody would look at you like you're crazy right a minister wouldn't give you the time of day they thought this was all technically geeky we've moved really far in two years right as peter said we have a problem now we're working on solutions but what troubles me in discussing with some regulators is they'll say we don't know what we're doing i'll say well that's okay but if you don't know what you're doing why are you licensing these systems without understanding the consequences and the silence was deafening so that's one thing i'd ask everyone to think about knowing what we know doesn't make sense to catch our breath right let the experts continue to develop their work and then knowing a little bit more we don't have to be perfect right rich your week if we get your work to you know within an order of magnitude of accuracy i think we'll know a whole lot more than we know today for sure so that's my suggestion yeah so i'm gonna actually pick up on that and come to joanne and back to on your eat and so before i do that there was a question from the audience about this is the size of the box limited by our ssa and and space tracking capabilities and i think to an extent it is informed by that right and unlimited is the right word but it is certainly informed by that right so joanne and on a read i'm going to come to you joanne first on a read second so this conversation that that john richard was just having we we get richard's work and his colleagues work to a point where it's within an order of magnitude that's great that doesn't mean the regulators are going to have the capacity or the capability to use that right so how do we what needs to be done to make this concept the capacity and the relevance in the regulatory system what needs to be done to kind of bring that alongside the research i think that's a very very good question it almost looks like we're applying something like it resolution 49 and really looking at the due diligence of of applications looking what is available in the capacity and acting almost as now this is dreadful for all regulators bouncers as to as to access or admittance criteria to the party that is a consolation but how do we decide who goes in to that party how do we decide what is equitable access how do we ensure equitable access how do we come back to john's to make sure that we protect future generations how do we effectively act as as bouncers to this so i come back to what i said the the opening comments at national level states have the the duty to authorize and continually supervise but they can't do this in isolation otherwise the bouncers don't have the information standing at the door of the consolation party to actually work out who can be admitted or not the bouncing the bouncer staying by the way and and also the bouncer needs the regulatory expertise and knowledge of actually how this affects but actually taking a holistic approach the commercial the financial the economic the technical and the competitive expertise and on tick to tick that holistic view now that's not easy and that's enough a lot that we're asking for the bouncers to have there but it's really important to to deal with at an international holistic level on your each of you anything add to that and um thank you what i can add just um there is a key role in terms of the in terms of the research so uh when when the researchers are technical parts or technical people when they come up with bad commendation so it's the question is as you asked what are you wondering if they are like regulatory if they have the capacity of like implementing those recommendations so what i can say it's like learning it's you should always learning on the based on the best practice and also they they are variable resources that are there so um as as Rihanna said no one country or non legata can work on isolation so there is a need of collaboration there is a need of like uh having like the uh the continuance uh raising awareness in terms of the space activities in terms of the space uh like in terms of the space uh uh capacity so it's that the the something that which which is needed it's it's to have like always learning and also have the collaboration of who is doing better who is like uh relatively like doing the effective but in terms of the managing space so they i think the important thing is it's just uh the the practical way and also the um i've built to learn from others that's what i can say and then both of those are are great points right it's it's how do we share knowledge lessons learned within our own community and then how do we respond to external communities to build political uh by build visibility right all right so we have about 15 minutes remaining and way too many questions to get to into that 15 minutes so i apologies to the audience for that um we're going to do some lightning around here so i'm going to direct the question to a specific panelist and you get one minute uh or less all right so um joanne first one to you uh what is the role of standards bodies like iso or national standards bodies in addressing this this problem some of the gaps you talked about so but like the long term sustainability guidelines we need some consensus they set the stage they actually allow research to be done and they allow international collaboration but one thing about the standards bodies that i was discussing earlier and i i've been saying this for 20 years could industry please get there to the meetings and actually have a voice it's really important so at the moment it's tends to be states that attend to iso and iudc which are both incredibly important and well chaired by the uk and um but it's really really important industry attend and get their voice so standards are really important there are lots of gaps in standards and let's roller per sleeves fill those gaps and take a more holistic approach to sustainability thank you a keel uh you made a great point earlier on the importance of cost benefit analysis but how do we evaluate this when the costs and benefits are occurred by different stakeholders yeah that's a great question so one way to think about this is what are the costs and benefits that a regulator is going to look at as salient now that's not going to be the most equitable way to make these decisions but practically that's probably an operationalizable way to make these decisions so push it back to the regulators the regulators have a mission you know the federal reserve for example has a dual mandate inflation and unemployment in the us that's what they look at so do we need orbital regulators whoever takes that role to have a mandate that tells them what they look at that might help all right thank you so richard would it be a good idea to at least agree on the size of the current problem and how to measure it how do we develop common models and tools so that's a tough one for a minute and we agree yeah yeah i think we can definitely agree um you're just talking to john this morning and you know from your perspective as as an operator technology company i think we agree on the physics we agree on the equations we agree on the models we're both engineers i think we can agree on that now the question is the results of the model i think that should be a public debate i think i think everyone should have an input like the models will have nuances it won't be one single answer because if you adjust parameters there'll be nuances and i think we got to bring in the public we got to bring in sort of different kinds of operators the international public and have a debate because there's only so much that the technical piece can tell you it's not going to solve the problem because this is clearly an economics problem clearly a regulatory problem so yeah i think that's the way forward which is have the models in the open have some open source capability where they can be probed and analyzed and let's have a public debate about it all right john uh this is about risk uh in in specific orbits complete system risk or individual satellite risk run that by me okay yeah okay so let me let me try and read this a little more directly so should we be focusing on limiting risk in orbit or limiting the number of satellites in orbit is this about uh complete system risk so environmental risk or is it risk to individual operators it's about the risk to the ecosystem because there are interactions among all of these different elements right and the best example i can give you is the world's outrage justifiably so i would add about the asap test that occurred in november where we had an intentional collision of two objects that spread orbital debris over many hundreds of orbits hundreds of kilometers of orbits and that debris will persist for decades or as much as a century of more so action by one satellite operator at a given altitude can have consequences for people seeking to operate above and below so i think we need to we consider need to consider the entirety of the situation because it does potentially affect all nations all operators all right thank you and we have a panel tomorrow specifically talking about that event and what we're doing about it in the community so yep all right there's a question here about whether our regulators have considered requiring bonds for post mission disposal the FCC has solicited several rounds of comments on a proposal just like that that's the federal communications commission in the in the u.s. that is still being considered so it's an idea that is certainly out there i don't believe it's been implemented anywhere so on your right so there's a question here about the relationship of satellite constellations and the applications and services those constellations provide to national economic and sustainable development so just curious from your perspective what can we do what can regulators policymakers do to ensure that internet connectivity and satellite constellations do provide the benefits that they're that they're offering um what they can say just um that the regulator should um act responsibly so um there's a why i'm saying that it's uh that um in in action that needs to be taken that will be taken by a regulator in his respective area so it will affect that forward so it's uh it's it's very important like to to act responsibly to that you're going to take thank you and so this one is for everybody it is a quick answer as well um geostationary orbit is used in an ordered way we have slots and we have an allocation process for those slots those slots have a spectrum asset and they also effectively have a physical um attribute to them as well right um do we see the possibility of regulating leo in a similar manner the slot-based manner or such a structured manner anyone who wishes to take that on i'll start first uh we have a 2019 paper called uh to the lattice constellations for leo slotting and uh it's complicated it's complicated because well there's a there's a one inclination at geo there's one inclination which is zero degrees and there's one altitude if you want to have multiple operators operating at the same altitude at different inclinations because of j2 effects their constellations are going to drift relative to each other and they're going to have a lot of conjunction events and they're going to have to orchestrate a dance on orbit so it's complicated to have slots it makes sense if you want to have slots in leo it makes sense to slot a shell an orbital shell it's clearly uh fairly easy to slot an altitude a lot of the filings uh effectively do that they designed for a range of altitudes about 30 kilometers in our recent paper which is efficient efficient stacking of large constellations we found that 30 kilometers is obviously way too big but you can actually reasonably get away with an altitude separation of a few kilometers so i think what we need to do is as more filings come in go back to the to the individuals that have allocated 30 kilometers of altitude space and say do you really need that like you said earlier because i don't think they do i think some of those altitude uh allocations have to do with their planned operations how how they're gonna raise into their orbit how are they're going to operate and that can be coordinated between operators and this is where we need the international harmonized and and uh consistent approach and it comes back also to what one aspect of geo is equitable use and allowing access to the next generation so this is where i'm afraid uh we need a multidisciplinary approach and an international approach with lawyers working with uh engineers etc to actually make the possible possible yeah oh maybe add a quick dismal note here the valuation problem for leo slots is tremendous like it is it is a fiendishly complicated beast so uh we've got some folks from the fcc here the fcc runs spectrum auctions in the us those are very difficult auctions combinatorial auctions the space of possible choices that you could make as a bidder in those auctions is immense now we don't auction orbital slots and i don't imagine that we will there's i hear legal challenges to that but if you are an operator who's trying to figure out what you are willing to pay for a slot and if we are going to define this slotting architecture in this way it's going to be challenging like it is at least as hard as the combinatorial auctions that we run for spectrums and then some with lethal non-trackables and and so forth like computationally just it's a beast and so even if we do get these slotting architectures i don't i don't know what what we expect operators to practically do with that yeah it's a good point i have two thoughts i'm gonna i'm gonna go out on a limb and say the first steps aren't that hard i think there's two things that can be done immediately in low earth orbit and i think the first one is really easy to understand if you think of you know orbit just as for simplicity as a matter of altitudes and i realize there's there's more to deal with than that you know most of the operators today are operating within relatively tight tolerances a few kilometers above and below their nominal altitudes it's kind of like a lane on the freeway we probably can do better than that but that's a good starting point but some of them are seeking authority to operate across as much as a hundred kilometers of altitude that's kind of like going down the freeway and veering across all of the lanes nobody can get by you the first thing we need to do to make sure we can share this these resources is to keep people to reasonable tolerances and that can easily be done today we don't need international standards it really is a matter of national regulators saying to people be responsible stay within a reasonable tolerance make sure there's room for others on the freeway i know we're not here to talk about spectrum but another thing we can do in terms of reasonableness is work on the concept of angular separation it's a concept that's been used for 50 years in the commercial industry that has allowed geo operators to share spectrum even though they're using the same frequencies they point in different directions and having those rules has enabled innovation it's allowed new operators to enter the field it's brought us new services and new technologies and robust competition and we need something like that in the leo area to make sure there's continued room for innovation in the future thank you on your read do you have anything you want to add on this one thank you all right so we have just a couple of minutes left and there's an issue that has come a topic that has come up several times and we've already talked about this a little bit and it came up yesterday for those of us that participated in the regulator the regulator dialogue and that is this topic of equity and and future access right and that is to me one of the the core issues in this discussion we can do things now but that doesn't mean that that will enable the things that we want to or don't even know we want to do in the future so the question from the audience is referring back to hues talk who determines what is the entity or the and and it's a very difficult question right but how do you determine how to represent that future stakeholder equity in policy decisions and i think this is i think something we all need to think about and and discuss we have a coffee break next i would love to have conversation around that and in the coffee break but if any of our panels have a thought on that equity question that future promise question and how we represent that value in in in policy decisions around this topic shall i just start sometimes sometimes the two most reliable laws are the laws of big numbers and big objects and secondly murphy's law one the more we put up there the more likely it is that murphy's law kicks in and and errors happen and mistakes happen so therefore i come back to two standards and try to take this holistic approach and also in regard to standards look at disposal and demise really really importantly now what's interesting at a national level and terrestrial level is there's lots of case law now coming back to real law about climate change and the responsibilities of states and responsibilities of nations and there's been a recent case saying we all have a duty to the generations unborn i think that's a fantastic concept so how do we apply this to the environmental law now just based on the generations unborn we look at proper demise proper disposal and actually do our research again i actually work with you guys to look at how we do this properly in space and how we get things back down and how we clean up and then make sure that that protection of the generations unborn and all the good things and innovations that we don't even see yet so let's protect the generations and born through really clear clarity of standards oh again add a dismal note here articles one and two of the outer space treaty really constrain what we can do right now in terms of equity and they do that because they effectively say that if you are able to get up there if you can get the regulatory approvals if you perceive a big enough benefit relative to the cost that you incur you can go there right we don't have any way right now to say we're going to cordon off regions of orbital space for these future generations in the property market you can absolutely do that i could buy a plot of land somewhere you know maybe not a freehold in in london right but like somewhere somewhere maybe in vermont with enough money i could buy a plot of land and people do this they say i'm going to keep this for conservation purposes i'm not going to build anything here we don't have the mechanisms in place to do that in orbit and our legal structures well-intentioned though they are limit our ability to build those mechanisms right now and so from an equity perspective i fear that this open access common situation that we've created that's the economic jargon for this it's going to really kill our ability to protect the space for future generations by setting aside say conservation easements i think i'll pass on this one i think you guys everybody find richard at the coffee break in the corner let me try it's a difficult question to answer but i don't think we can begin to answer it until we've answered the question of how much is too much so what i mean by that is when we're thinking about these capacity questions they exist on a number of levels they exist on the the level of the things that richard's been studying the hue talked about how much room is in the box in terms of physical space and collision risk if you talk to the astronomers they exist in terms of how much additional light pollution can we have without really adversely impacting you know critical things that are done like identifying space objects before they hit earth and they also exist from an environmental perspective excellent paper by marty ross of the aerospace corporation just in the past 10 days talking about the environmental impacts of launches and and satellites burning up in the atmosphere right contrary to popular conception they don't disappear it breaks up in the small particles and it hangs out in the atmosphere and we don't really know the consequences in terms of climate change and ozone depletion so i think we really need as a matter of urgency to study these issues know what the limits are then when we know what the limits are we can start to address the question of how much we consume today and how much we preserve for the future thank you if i may um what what i can say it's uh everyone has to put the like the uh using the space property it must be the priority of everyone in that case um again there must be like there must be a way of like having the whole knowledge of what is happening and what is what will be happening once we we don't use the the space responsibly so i think they they are the two things which is important it's like like the the proper use of space should be the priority again there is a need of having all uh technically like to have the whole information in terms of how how we can use how we can uh protect uh like uh in country and the future how we can just to have the whole information of the best way of using space and the the the impact of like misusing the misusing the space thank you all right so we could keep going but we we must uh let let the coffee break happen so there is coffee being served on this floor there's also coffee and and networking space on the fourth floor so one level down i want to thank our coffee break sponsors for offering that opportunity i want to thank the panel for for joining us i want to thank the audiences for the questions and we will be back for the next session at 15 past 11 local time so thank you everyone