 The world is changing up in space very much. We've had the International Space Station flying now for over two decades. But we've got a Chinese space station up there now. We are having the first of the commercial flights of private paying passengers going to spacecraft that are going to the ISS, that are staying on the ISS, that aren't going to the ISS. Really the world is changing very much. And we're discussing the future of what's going to happen to the International Space Station with its partners, and what will the commercial platforms that succeed it look like. All of this is happening while thousands of new satellites are being launched into low Earth orbit, which is complicating the space picture greatly. The panel now for the next hour or so, we're going to identify gaps in regulatory and legal regimes that currently exist to govern space stations. And we're going to look at how best we might ensure the next stage of human space flight in low Earth orbit is done in a sustainable and cooperative manner. My name is Libby Jackson. I work at the UK Space Agency where I am the exploration science manager. I've been working in the field of human space flight for the best part of two decades. Within my portfolio at the Space Agency, I look after the science that we do on the space station and the humans who go there, the astronauts. Prior to my time at the UK Space Agency, I spent seven years working in mission control for the ISS. So I have seen up close really the amazing science that we do on the space station, the people who make it happen both in space and on the ground. And the real dangers that are posed by space debris every day with the humans living inside tin cans, which are pretty thinly thin on the outside. There's not much separating the crew inside from the harsh environment outside. To take us through this, I am absolutely thrilled that we've got a wonderful panel. Rebecca Bresnick from the Chief Assistant Council for International Matters at NASA, but also I'm going to let her introduce herself better. Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca Bresnick and I'm an adjunct professor at the University of Houston where I teach space law. In addition to that, I've also been counsel to NASA for two decades and the majority of that being primary counsel to the International Space Station. Lucy Edge, chief operating officer at the Satellite Applications Catapult. Not much more to add to that to be honest, but at the Catapult we do work very closely with industry, government and academia to try and overcome some of these more difficult problems. So I think it will be a good conversation today. And then on my left, I'm delighted to welcome Tanya Masson-Svan, the Assistant Professor of Law at Leiden University. I am. Yes, I'm an assistant professor of space law and deputy director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law that was founded at Leiden University in 1985. And I also advise the Dutch government on implementation of our legislation. We don't have human space flight yet, but it is certainly one of the topics that I have been doing, addressing in my research, both orbital, suborbital, so looking forward to the debate. Thank you very much. Finally, at the end, and definitely not last but not least, Eric Stalmer from Voyager Space Holdings. Yes, I am Eric Stalmer from Voyager Space Holdings. So we all check out. We all say who we are. I've been with Voyager for about two and a half years now. And prior to that, I ran the Commercial Space Flight Federation, which was an organization of about 85 to 90 different commercial space companies and organizations. So I got a pretty good mix and overview and insight into the commercial space industry and how it's grown over the last 10 years. So I'm thrilled to be on this panel and thank Secure World for putting together such an all-star list here and myself. I think you will agree we've got all the right people to tackle this subject. We're going to be starting with some questions that we've got already, but this is, of course, an interactive session. So in your hoover up, please do start asking questions. I will see them here on my technology and we'll be able to relay them to the panel. So please do get involved and ask away. But we're going to start, Tanya, if it's okay, a question for you. Can you set the scene for us? What is the current legal international regime that relates to human space flight in low Earth orbit? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I'll spend just a few minutes to outline that. Of course, I always like to underline that there is a basic legal framework. We've heard several references to space law in this exciting symposium and sometimes people say, oh, it's outdated, it's old, it doesn't address everything. That's perhaps true. It needs additions. It needs to be complemented. But there is a set of rules and principles that apply to activities in outer space. And that is law made by the United Nations, by the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. We have a set of five treaties and resolutions on principles and so on, which do set certain rules also regarding that apply also to human space flight. So, for instance, the responsibility of states for national activities in outer space, liability of launching states for damage caused either in outer space or on the Earth. And specific rules set then complemented in the liability convention that subsequently was adopted after the outer space treaty. We also have rules that say that astronauts are envoys of mankind in the outer space treaty. Of course, you can wonder what that means and especially in the new context of private astronauts, what is the meaning? Are they a kind of ambassador? Do they get special protection? Is there a difference with private astronauts? Should there be also principles of due regard for each other's activities? And that's of course very important in the sense of linking this topic to the sustainability subject for which we are gathered here these days. And the principle of non-harmful interference with each other's activities, which if that is happening or there is a risk of that happening, states can request consultation with each other. So, obviously that is a set of quite general principles. And we have had since the 1960s when these rules were adopted, human space flight has become reality. We have had 60 years plus of human space flight with, of course, Yuri Gagarin being the first human and Valentina Terescova. I always like to mention the first woman in space as well. And several space stations that have been launched into outer space, but two of them are special. Well, three now, I guess, Mir, the Russian space station that was assembled in outer space and was de-orbited in 2001. And then subsequently the International Space Station, which first had an agreement, a set of rules. Very interesting legal framework with an intergovernmental agreement followed up by memoranda of understanding between agencies. And then implementing agreements with all the other actors that are involved, which was adopted first in 1988. And then, and of course, I'm sure Rebecca will say more about that. But then another IGA was adopted in 1998 when Mir was ending and Russia, Russian Federation joined the ISS. So we have already that set of additional rules in the space station framework that address certain aspects that were not addressed in those treaties. Because obviously the founding fathers, mothers of the treaties did not know everything that would be happening. So there you have rules on intellectual property rights or on criminal jurisdiction or on the cross-waver of liability among the partners so that they could work together and not be boiled down in legal disputes on liability issues. And that is, I think, a very solid framework. The question, of course, is going to be, is that also going to be suitable for the next step? And discussions are now ongoing for the Gateway Program, where the 15 states that have been involved with ISS, except Russia, so actually 14, are in agreement of using the legal framework of the ISS to also work on the Gateway, which is, of course, not a quite interesting legal finding because the ISS agreement was made for building a station in low Earth orbit. The Gateway is obviously not in low Earth orbit, but the IGA contains an article on evolution of the station, and so the partners agreed that they could interpret the Gateway as an evolution of the station as a next step. So that would mean there is no need for having a whole new legal framework, but they could put that cooperation under the IGA framework. Of course it's interesting because there's one partner missing, so what does that mean that may have some legal implications? And now we have this step towards private stations, and I'm sure we'll be discussing that more, so I won't go into that now, but that will raise a whole lot of other questions on the legal status of private astronauts, liability issues and what have you, but perhaps I'll leave it to that for now. Thank you, Tania, but I think that's a great transition into the question I wanted to ask to Rebecca next. Tania mentioned a lot about the evolution that we've got to the Gateway and so on, but we're seeing all these commercial players come in low Earth orbit. Thinking about the commercial stations, what are we going to need to do? Are there going to be modifications or additions to all the regulations that were set up for the ISS? How do we handle these new commercial space stations? So before I start, every good attorney has to say that I'm not speaking for my agency, I'm speaking for myself and my personal capacity, but yes, so as we were doing those negotiations from ISS to Gateway, we took a look at what was going on on ISS and what worked and how to take that to Gateway, what to take to Gateway. It wasn't a one for one, we didn't take the whole legal structure with us, and I think that's very true of also these private space stations. One really important thing to note is we actually do not have a lot of regulations regulating the International Space Station. It's a governmental activity, very similar to space launches that are done by the government. We do not fall under the commercial regulations that commercial entities would fall under. We are transitioning a bit with regards to that. As you are seeing, we are purchasing services now from commercial entities, and those activities now are being commercially licensed. But for ISS activities, the only activities that are actually regulated are primarily the crew curd of conduct and the liability framework, and that was actually just to be able to implement what our requirements were in the intergovernmental agreement that Tanya had mentioned. So it's very interesting because we do have 20 years of experience of what has worked the past two decades and what hasn't, and we do hope that these commercial entities will look and many of, when you look at the people that are within these commercial entities too, many of them come from NASA, they come from the government, so they have this experience. As you saw most recently, you saw AXIUM-1, the AXIUM-1 mission, and AXIUM is also looking at building a structure in outer space as well. Well, the CEO of AXIUM was also the International Space Station program manager for 10 years, so there's a lot of that knowledge going into the private sector just via the people. But how else is that knowledge getting passed on and to make sure that there are some sort of rules or regulations, and I don't like using the word regulations, I like, well I think there should be some regulating going on, it's a small R, not a big R. Very similar to commercial spaceflight, we are not regulating commercial spaceflight. We are, there's a moratorium right now while there are basic rules on the managing of spaceflight, we are trying not to regulate and allow commercial entities to develop the commercial space without being overly regulated. I think that is a similar concept of what we will be seeing also for these commercial international space stations. However, as I said, I hope that they look to what we have, what we've learned in the past two decades, and some of those things would be, you know, what are the medical standards for crew going up to a commercial space station. That to me would be information and standards that you would want to use whether you're on a commercial platform or a government platform. There's a lot of practicality to that, you want to make sure that obviously your crew are healthy, and that will also depend upon how long they're up there and what activities they're doing, but in addition to that also what are the quarantine requirements before you go up to an international space station, and whether you're a commercial or government, you don't want to get up there, have a sick crew, and remember if a whole crew goes up and one crew member gets sick, that whole crew has to come back home. That's not good for commercial business. Some of the other things we will have to take a look at is liability. What's the liability structure going to be up there? Currently we have a cross waiver in place that's worked great. We've agreed amongst the governments that are up there right now working on ISS. Is that the right structure for a commercial space station? What about jurisdiction? So, as Tanya mentioned, the Outer Space Treaty will obviously apply to these structures, and the Outer Space Treaty states that jurisdiction is based on who registers that object before it goes up into space. So, most likely it will be a U.S. company registering these space modules before they go up. So, these people will be under U.S. jurisdiction. Does everybody want to be under U.S. jurisdiction? These platforms are going to be meant for internationals, not just domestic persons. What about criminal jurisdiction? Who's going to have jurisdiction over these astronauts if it's not a good day up on these platforms? Intellectual property. So, the intellectual property rights and the clause that we have in the IGA is very limited. It's very small, but it's also based on the fact that you have governments cooperating. It's going to be a very different environment up with these commercial platforms where these commercial entities are going to want to keep their intellectual property. They're not going to want to do as much sharing. They're not going to want to give any type of necessarily government use rights to the intellectual property. So, what is going to be the intellectual property structure? And then that's also going to be based on, again, jurisdiction. So, there's a lot of things, like I said, that we've learned with ISS what's applicable to a government platform, but it's not a one for one when you're looking at these commercial platforms. And I think that's something that these commercial entities are going to have to take a look at. So, let's ask those commercial entities how they're going to look at it. It's turning to Eric. In the US alone, there are four industry teams, of course, including yours, who are working with NASA to develop these concepts for the space station and the other activities beyond that program. What are the market interests that are driving the activity and what is the role of safety in supporting that interest? Well, great question and thank you so much. There are four other companies in the US, and I can't speak to the other companies, although I have a decent idea of what they're looking at. From our perspective, from Voyager's perspective, although this isn't, NASA has initiated this process, we are really looking at it from a global perspective. And I say that in keeping NASA informed each step of the way on what we're doing, on our activity, on our designs, and as you know, the CLD contract is a public-private partnership. So NASA isn't just giving us a blank check and say, hey, build a space station. They're giving us seed money, but the onus is on us and these other companies to raise these funds. One of these companies is self-funded billionaires. That's not a problem for them to raise that kind of money or be allocated that kind of money. You look at it, but for us, we're raising that money. So we're looking to international partnerships from a lot of non-traditional countries that do not have the robust space programs like we see with the ISS partners. But of course, you have to look at it from the perspective. If you're an ISS partner, you're saying, well, what does this mean for us in 2030? If the space station goes away in 2030, what are the options available to us? And what we are saying is we are open for business. We are working with, of course, NASA as a partner, but also the international space agencies will be partners with us as well. We've had a lot of bilateral meetings with international partners there. But a lot of your non-traditional countries, as I said, that want to participate in space do not have a space program. But we feel that's part of, you know, timely given where we are, the space sustainability. I think opening the pie, you know, that it's not, everyone gets a slice of pie, I think you got to make a bigger pie. So there's more pie for everyone. And that's a critical aspect for Voyager. I think that's for the sanctity and the evolution of our world. We need more people involved because we're looking at it for, and then those are the partners, but we're looking at it from the business and social aspects that an international space station can bring. And that's looking at, from a commercial perspective, how do we, the ag tech, you know, and how do we grow and sustain kind of life and those sort of resources in space to sustain, you know, more development in space. So some of the commercial endeavors that we're looking at, we've looked to the UAE government on a star lab oasis, where, you know, the desert is one of the harshest environments to grow food. And you see the work that the UAE has done in really converting a desert to, you know, a garden oasis as well as a business and investment in a hub. But, you know, they've really transformed what they have tremendously. So we're partnering them on how you can live and grow things in space and how to develop that for food scarcity, water scarcity, and how do you adapt to that. So that's an interesting partnership. We see pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical industry has expressed a lot of interest as well as the obvious is tourism, but we don't want to be seen purely as a tourism platform, but you got to look at what pays the bills and you got to think creatively. And I got to tell you some of the offers and the proposals that we've gotten from tourist perspective, you know, mixed martial arts fighting in space. You got to entertain all options, but there are going to be a lot of those different avenues and approaches and business models to make that you're not limited by the rules that inhibited the International Space Station. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also talked about safety. And that's something that, as Rebecca said, you can draw off the 20 years experience that NASA has provided and that NASA has gleaned on what works, what doesn't work. Neil deGrasse Tyson yesterday said something about contracts and said the verbiage in contracts is only there because a problem came up and you had to write it down. So looking at that, what are the issues that the International Space Station has faced, whether it's crew time or maintenance or just large safety issues. Looking at that vast experience that we've had living and working in space for the last 20 years and building off of that on the best practices. So that's some of the vision I see for space stations right now. Thank you, Eric. The space stations that you will bring and the opportunities there on the current space station is what's driving the work that Lucy does. The catapult is looking to accelerate the emergence of new space applications. So what is the contribution that you see from these commercial platforms? Do you see any risks in the transition from the ISS to the commercial platforms for all your work? Yeah, I mean there are definitely risks, there are always risks and the question is what's our appetite. I think to start with that first point, moving from the ISS or even if the ISS was to be retained but moving to having the availability of commercial platforms as well. This is a pattern that we've seen in many different sectors and I don't think it's particularly different here. Eric talked about that pie getting bigger and I think that is a really important point. So the accessibility of the platforms, the pace of access to the platforms and the democratisation of the access to the platforms are I think three really, really important points. We're really at the phase at the moment, the ISS is a really good little vignette of where the space sector is in general, where it's moving from this very strong institutionalised approach even if it's across many governments and then trying to slowly move into a more commercial world. And there's all sorts of fantastic experiments that go on on the ISS that fit into that but they are very much a sort of boutique offer, if you like. And boutique offers are often quite expensive or if not expensive, quite difficult to access. You've either got to know someone who can get you the ticket or you've got to have a very specific product that fits into a very specific mould. So I think being able to grow out that offer so it can be more user-led is a really important part of it. I think I'll probably sum all that up into an agility of access to the platforms and we are getting there but it's going to be a long journey. Many of the panels yesterday and today have alluded to the balance between the baggage and the lessons learned from having historic experiences in space. It is extremely powerful information evidence risk reduction but it can also be baggage. We can stick with a legal starting point which may not be appropriate going forward or an approach to the risk to come to the second point which is probably not exactly what we want to be doing when we think about the future of the use of Leo. If we start to think about the commercial platforms as one part, for example, of a manufacturing environment in space where we might have an inhabited section but you might also have several manufacturing areas as well, recycling areas, all sorts of things going on that are much more automated don't require human interaction and would they be in the same place or in a different place. That's immediately going to stumble upon some really basic problems in the way that we've talked about the ISS because there will be items of close approach which will be deliberately there rather than accidentally there. So we'll stumble before we even start if we try and just edit what we've got. So I think there's a really strong need for us to think about what point do we want to get to, what point do users want to get to and how do we run a risk assessment alongside that that is for the users in the longer term. When I say that I mean non-space people. Again today I think we've got quite a heavy space leaning at this event and that's great because it brings all the experience but the pharma companies or the fibre optics companies or the new materials manufacturers, I don't know what their cycle of requirement is. I don't know how quickly they need to get their regulations through in order to be able to achieve their next product to market and we need to make sure that whatever we're putting in place for these platforms is going to meet those needs because otherwise we're immediately shutting ourselves off from the customers of the environment that we're trying to create. So I know that's a really obvious point and I should probably have started by saying I think I'm probably the agitator on this panel. So I'll wear that badge with pride and I think the only other thing I'd say is that good system engineers will always say that risk free approaches are in series but pragmatic approaches are in parallel and that isn't just the technical work, that's everything else that we're doing as well and when we're thinking about how we're going to develop our commercial platforms, our use of Leo for R&D or for the manufacturing which I think is the next step after this then we need to be running that profiling of the regulations of the liabilities assessment in parallel with all those different user needs and not in series. You say you're the agitator but you are there talking to the customers who will be using these new platforms and as you say it's very important that we support these new users so I'm going to turn to Tanya and ask well how does the international community changes approach to a liability to help all these new users to meet their needs. Hugely, yeah because what we have in space law is a state based liability, liability is given to the launching state which can be several states but it is a state that has to present a claim against another state and if we have this scenario where you have private stations how do you deal then with one astronaut causing damage to another on board a station or an accident happening in space, we heard several references to gravity, the movie yesterday where you have astronauts from one station having to go to another station are the docking mechanisms the same, is it safe, all those questions will have to be addressed but mainly what we would need to device is a system of passenger liability when we have private astronauts going to private space stations. The current system in space law is only third party liability so causing damage to a non contractual partner but these will be persons who buy a trip to space and so the states will have to ensure that there is an oversight that there is a licensing process that there is perhaps a liability for damage against third parties but also the passengers themselves will have to know what their liability exposure is also what are the rescue provisions if there is indeed an accident we have a rescue agreement where states are obliged to rescue and the obligations are quite strict when human passengers are involved it's a bit different for rescuing or returning objects that might crash in another country but if you have astronauts in distress states are obliged to immediately render assistance because they cannot charge for the cost of that so what do you do if a private station is close to a stranded astronaut and can the government then oblige that the operator of that private station to go and rescue that astronaut those are questions that will have to be addressed in the legal framework and so I see a large role here for the supervising state so the whole implementation question of article six of the outer space treaty which says states are responsible for the activities of their nationals in outer space that will be the implementation of that in national law and in licensing requirements will be will be quite important liability could of course also arise if the space station itself crashes who would then cover the damage can the state make sure that when it licenses a private space station that it has a solid the orbiting mechanism that there is compliance with debris mitigation rules and we come back again to making the link with the sustainability topic so there also the risk is if you have a space station it's completely different from the small satellites that we have been discussing if a small satellite is no longer working and gets back through the atmosphere it will burn up so there's only really a risk of damage in outer space which is subject to a fault liability has never been done we have no case law so there's no standard of fault but if you have a space station crashing back to earth and we remember perhaps those who are old enough in the room when mere was getting back in 2001 I remember that Australia was pretty nervous because it's very hard to predict where exactly it's going to enter and of course the majority of the earth is water so chances that it falls into the Pacific or oceans is quite large but still the risk of something crashing on earth might be much more real because we're talking about large structures here and then we're talking about an absolute liability of the launching state so that may bring considerable risk to the state that is potentially going to be held liable so we will really need to look at all these issues and I see a big role for national law implementation of the treaty principles that are there that we have to abide by you bring in the human angle there which of course is so important and I'm going to move to thinking about this growing astronaut, the growing commercial astronaut core that we've gotten and turned to Rebecca there's been a question that's come in online and please do keep sending them in the question I had for you Rebecca was does this growing commercial core require a different legal approach to ensure human safety but it was an interesting point also raised online with all these space stations that are coming there might be as many as perhaps eight coming someone's raised a question is it time to have a multinational crew rescue situation what are the legal things that we need to make sure that we can ensure human safety one thing I want to raise with regards to liability is the liability structure that we use on the ISS today which we are seeing more and more used in the private sector which is a cross waiver of liability and there's a lot of great benefits to using this cross waiver of liability structure it's basically where two parties agree not to sue each other under most circumstances with some exception with the exception of say willful misconduct but it's not just that we don't it's not just that we agree not to sue one another we also agree not to sue each other's related entities down the whole chain and this structure is very beneficial within space activities it basically says nobody's going to sue anyone and it's also very beneficial because it allows parties to better understand their risks and as you heard today you know what things can really drive down the cost of insurance as well and I know in all of the private astronaut type missions and not just our most recent private astronaut mission but also space flight participants that have flown on Soyuz vehicles and they're dealing with some of the insurance brokers they want to better understand that risk before they write insurance policy and most insurance brokers get very comfortable or more comfortable with the idea when they're a cross waivers in place I just wanted to raise that as a possibility for liability regime actually on the station with regards to the growing commercial astronaut core on these platforms again I would go back to what do we know from our experiences on ISS I will say in the past two years I've learned a significant amount setting up the legal framework for the Axiom 1 mission up on the International Space Station but I have to be honest I didn't just learn from that mission I've learned from the 20 years of experience of the space flight participants that flew up to ISS with the Russians as well we didn't set up the same structure that the Russians had put in place for their private astronauts we did take a very close look at liability though and ensuring that our government astronauts were taken care of and we were bringing a crew not just of one private astronaut but we brought a crew of four private astronauts up into space and we did have to take again a look at that liability regime do we allow that private astronaut to come up and have that capability to sue the agency do we give that private astronaut the capability to sue other private astronauts what type of insurance requirements do we require of the private astronaut not just the private astronaut but also the company that was bringing up the private astronaut medical requirements there is an interim directive that was put in place regarding the medical requirements of these private astronauts and that's publicly available and that's great information for these new commercial platforms on what they may want to implement for their platforms we also where I see a big difference to we still are a government platform so we do have certain requirements that these commercial platforms may not have in place one being the crew code of conduct which I mentioned earlier but to get into a little more detail about that there are some restrictions for our crew members within that crew code of conduct that doesn't allow them to do certain commercial activities because they are government employees so how are you going to change that crew code of conduct are you going to have a crew code of conduct for these commercial platforms what type of conduct are you going to expect from these crew members and that does play very much into safety because you want to understand what are the expectations of these crew members going up to station the crew code of conduct also puts forth the command structure up on the international space station who's in charge what type of authority does that commander have also something very important that we put in place for these private astronaut missions for purposes of safety is to ensure that there is a crew member that either has had previous space experience or experience in a harsh environment going up with these crew members to help them acclimate and ensure that they know the way around and help them figure out basically living and working in space do you have that requirement as well for these private platforms and the other thing I wanted to mention too as Eric mentioned NASA put out 416 million dollars of seed money these were done through funded what we call funded space act agreements but as a part of this process it's not that we just hand over this money as Eric mentioned we're not that generous some requirements exactly so these requirements while I said earlier we won't be I don't believe that we need to be setting up regulations through these requirements we are still implementing expectations on the commercial market so as a part of these platforms NASA is doing this because we want to get out of low earth orbit we want to be a customer of many in low earth orbit but as a part of that our crew members are going to be on these commercial platforms and we aren't going to just send our crew members to platforms without having expectations of specific safety certifications and phase 2 of these funded space act agreements is that NASA will certify those platforms for use by NASA and partner astronauts and many of these private astronauts that go up to these platforms they're going to want to know well is that the same standard that NASA has we did see that even with the private astronaut missions for astronauts going up to the international space stations they want it to be held by the same standards they felt comfortable with being held to the same standards so my 2 cents worth fascinating 2 cents I'm going to turn to some questions from the audience now because we are rapidly running out of time and it's an interesting question here that I think Lucy and Eric might have sent some thoughts on this in 2021 the NASA inspector general warned of the likely gap between the ISS retirement and the upcoming commercial space stations which in his words could result in a collapse of the commercial space economy or the Leo commercial space economy and what's your take on that assessment? Turn to Eric as the person is going to replace it and then Lucy perhaps as the users of all of them we don't want a gap we'll mine the gap if you will as we're here we saw this movie before with transportation to and from the space station where there was a long gap that the United States had providing astronauts, US astronauts, a ride to and from the space station we were dependent on Russia and that was not an enviable position that we were in so we are extremely mindful of when NASA is projecting the station to be retired and we are trying to plan well in advance to be open for business well before that date we're shooting for 2027, 2028 timeframe which should bake in some leeway time in between there if you allow me just a moment of levity Rebecca was saying earlier on the comments about the rules of the road that how there would be no suing in space and everything years ago in 2015 our organization was working on this landmark piece of space legislation it was called the commercial space launch competitiveness act and it was the biggest piece of legislation congress was working on and as many from the United States know congress is not the most effective body of reasoning from time to time and often don't get a lot done but we were really moving the ball forward with the Democrats and Republicans and the only group that held us up was the trial attorneys that said hey we want the right to sue if something goes wrong so I always keep that in the back of my head maybe not international and space law, space attorneys, they're a different breed, they're better than that but the trial attorneys beware so I'll turn it over to you Lucia well I think first of all I'd say I don't think there will be a gap in the commercial use of Leo but I think it could look very different, I mean the minister this morning talked about a company in Wales which is going from strength to strength called Spaceforge they're going to be looking at the commercial uses of Leo in a completely different way so I think we all need to be aware of that as well and again with my agitator badge on I say these platforms are important these livable spaces are important part of the story but they're not the only part of the story anymore there's a lot more that goes with it and so I don't believe there will be a sort of crisis of the commercialisation of Leo I think we have to be mindful of the things that can end up holding us back accidentally sometimes and that isn't to belittle the regulations component, the legal component but again just to think about how do we actually want to address our user need you know risk shouldn't be set to zero and we've got, we're probably talking about two sort of chunks of risk here and obviously there are thousands but just to simplify it we've got that sort of healthy humans in space component and then we've got the space debris component which has been a big part of what we're talking about today now there are aspects of going to space affect the health of humans but there are also aspects of climbing a mountain or sailing around the world in a yacht that affect the health of humans or running a marathon, it affects our health so we've got to decide what is the risk profile that we want and one human will want a different profile from another human because that's what we're like so I think we have got to be thinking from the commercial perspective there needs to be a minimum because we don't want people causing massive disruption in a place that's reasonably hard to get to but also let's think more carefully about what we really want that risk to be I won't spend any time on the debris point because I think we've done a lot on that this conference and there isn't really a lot that's different here it's the same debris challenge Thank you very much Lucy I'm scrolling through the questions here to see where best to take the conversation next I'm going to pick up on this one and turn to my two legal experts on the panel they say that according to Liability Convention states that responsible for the damages occurred in space in applications of the launching state principle or the object registration principle I hope that's meaning something to you too How should we adapt this framework with the increasing participation of the private actors and they mentioned SpaceX but there are so many people coming in with touch on it briefly but I wondered if you had any further thoughts We have the basic rules launching states are liable for damage and there's a difference between responsibility and liability that maybe is well that's sometimes complicated responsibility means that you have to ensure that the national activities of a state are carried out responsibly that means that states have to carry out authorization and supervision have to have a licensing system liability is linked to the launching state so that's a different concept and it arises when damage occurs there is a problem that we have to solve by providing compensation or restoring a situation that occurred that existed before so liability is linked to launching state and one of the launching states is the state of registry so it's a bit a complex system but I thought it would be important to highlight those differences so that is all state based rules and as I said earlier with private space stations we have to really look back at that responsibility issue first because states whose national activities these are and we do not have a clear definition but likely where an operator is located has its head offices that government would be the appropriate state as it is stated in the outer space treaty that state has to really ensure that it covers its back because whatever the private operator is going to do may have consequences for states that may mean that it has to compensate for damage if it is also a launching state so that licensing system, that authorization and supervision as I said earlier is going to be ever more important and I think I would underline it that way Thank you Rebecca, any thoughts? I think maybe one thing to add is as Tonya mentioned the liability convention when there are accidents in space it's based on fault liability who's at fault? and I think fault is very difficult to determine when you have no rules of the road there are no coordination guidelines of how actors have to respond in space so a good example if you have a space station that's going to possibly collide with a satellite who's responsible for moving and until you really understand that responsibility it's very difficult to then determine who is at fault so I think we do need better guidelines and a better understanding of what those rules of the road are to add more teeth to the liability convention that can be used in the future and perhaps I can just add as an illustration there was a recent case where China actually sent a note verbal to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs saying that its space station had been endangered by a Starlink satellite that they had to carry out a maneuver to get out of the way and so it was quite interesting because they used Article 5 of the Outer Space Treaty which says that states have to notify certain phenomena that they observe to the UN and so they use that article to send a message to the UN to which the United States of course as the responsible state for Starlink replied but not under that same article but under another article, Article 11 to give information to the United Nations where it said well according to us there was no danger so we did not notify so that really underlines also what Rebecca said that need for rules of the road we need to know what is the standard what is too close and apparently in this specific case the two states, it's a clear example where two states had a different understanding of what is too close and what has to be done and who has to move out of the way so it's a very clear illustration that space traffic management and rules of the road are essential to be agreed at a global level Indeed and I think that brings us really nicely into where we have to sadly shortly bring this to a close so I wanted to give all our panellys members just an opportunity to very briefly share any final thoughts and the question if you had to pick one of the many things we've been discussing in this panel what space sustainability challenge will be most pressing in the changing Leo environment So I think one of the things and we talked about the gap and how do we avoid the gap there's always the technical aspect of projects pushing to the right but you also have to look at from a financial perspective as well and you have to make a viable business case and inviting business case for others to join you otherwise as we see with the financial markets right now and what a lot of companies are suffering maybe that have gone public too early and for not the right reasons and other aspects of that I think that is something but I think you also need for as we're here talking about sustainability you have to have the right business model to do the right thing and that as we're talking more about sustainability how do you involve more people more aspects of thinking from a sustainable perspective from the beginning gets you there at the end but if you want to just latch that on and just use it as a tagline once you launch I don't think it's not a successful business model that way Thank you Eric, Tanya some brief thoughts Yeah let's look at creating prospects for future generation which is also what sustainability is about right we have to make sure that the use of outer space is sustained for future generations so I would on the line again things like space traffic management in a very broad sense so both what I mentioned earlier the in orbit maneuvering rules I think that is already applicable and important for the ISS a big question how do we deorbit these large structures and make sure that they do not cause damage and even filling up the oceans with all of these stations is of course not an ideal solution for sustainability on earth either so I would see that as the major challenges Thank you Tanya, Rebecca I think the major point I would like to make as an attorney that works with all of these programs the one thing that I have seen that's really important is as I've listened the past day and a half and everyone has I think absolutely wonderful ideas however what is implementable and we always have to make sure that we are also looking at implementation and what we can implement and making sure the user is also talking to the lawyers and also talking to the people in industry as Eric mentioned what's financially viable if we over-regulate we're not going to have a commercial market so where is that balance and we do have to make sure that we are keeping that balance Lucy? I think a very quick technical answer is that in order to get the kind of manoeuvrability we need in Leo to do all the things we want to do we need real improvement in actuated technology so that's the sort of side piece from a different part of my life but what I would say in terms of the broader story is that there was a huge precedent for operators working really closely together in space privately in the background to solve really difficult problems like when they've got two sets of state vectors that do not match and who's going to move, who's full to the etc what I worry about is that space has just become more of a public conversation now and those back room solutions are going to be lived out in the newspapers or on social media and that means that the diplomacy piece that was mentioned in the previous panel becomes so so much more important so I think linking the really good precedent that we already have for collaboration in space with some good diplomatic overlay is really where we need to go Thank you There is clearly lots to be done still but lots of good ground work to base it all on and it's a really exciting time for the sector to be evolving and I hope we've given you some ideas about how we can take that forward and the work that we need to be done to enable this new commercial low earth orbit space to be sustainable, to be safe and to be accessible for many many people not just the space sector but those beyond and profitable as well So with that we have to close here Can we please all thank the fabulous panelists Thank you very much