 Well, good afternoon. Thank you to all of you for still being here. I know last panel of the day, but we have something very exciting. It's rare in these that you have an actual new document to dig into. We have actual news to talk about, which is kind of a dream as a journalist. So as Crystal mentioned, I'm the managing editor of Payload, and I'm so excited to be here today with our panelists. Joining me for this conversation are Nikolai Kristloff, the lead for the Future of Space at the World Economic Forum, and Brynorth Lashley, the technical operations and service delivery manager at GHGSAT, which is one of the signatories to the new recommendation. So gentlemen, thank you so much both for being here. Nikolai, I'd like to start with you. As we mentioned, these recommendations did just come out today. So if some people in our audience might not have gotten the chance to read them, I'm hoping you can give sort of a high level overview of what's in the documentation or in the document and some background on sort of how they came to be just to set the foundation for our conversation. Yeah, well, thanks very much, and delighted to be here. Thank you very much to Secure World Foundation for giving really us the opportunity to share with, I think, the wider community, the experts that are in this room and online. We're certainly very excited about this. Maybe just as a step back, give a little bit of introduction to if you don't know what the World Economic Forum is and why we're sort of playing around and trying to do things in the space sector. So we are the international organization for public-private collaboration. We cover all sorts of global issues from food security to climate to circular economy to impact investing and all the other topics. And we work across also all the different industry sectors. Space is a relatively new area for us. We've been really sort of increasing the amount of activities we do to a point where now we're sort of really growing the team and doing much more than just actually the topic of space sustainability and covering that. The way actually we got into this is through something that was mentioned to my excitement several times already today, which was a space sustainability rating, which was a concept born within a small group of experts on space. Some of them actually I think are present here today. Five, six years ago. And then we said, look, let's actually develop this concept. Let's build it out. And we were able in a small consortium to build it. And now it's launched. It's live. It's a team. It's a new association, essentially run out of Lausanne, University of Lausanne. That was the birthplace for this. And it's really sort of a novel concept that we discussed. Now that sort of led us to think further about how do we support as an institution the topic of space safety, sustainability. And actually, our partner CEO said, look, there is more to be done. We see some progress, but it's not there's not enough concrete things happening. So we sort of came together very quickly, put out a small statement signed by about, I think, at the time, 18 industry partners. This was 20 months ago. And they said, look, let's dive deeper into this. And so over the last year, with support from the European Space Agency and a lot of community experts and our partners, we've sort of tried to see, where can we add value? Of course, there are some other efforts. There are other best practices. There was, of course, standards from ISO, IADC, Cropius. We try to sort of take a little bit of a different approach to this. On one hand, we wanted to push the envelope a little bit on some of these very concrete and specific targets. And you'll see in the document, so we try to address the post-mission disposal success rate. We try to address the number of years in orbit. We also looked at talking about active maneuverability. And where do you do that? At which altitude you should be thinking about that. But also, there are a lot of concepts there that touch on environmental capacity, on things that were just covered in the session before this by some of the panelists on things like servicing and active debris removal, and how we should be thinking more about this in a bit more forward-thinking manner. Communications and things like that. But I think it also gives sort of a long-term vision. I think for us, the recommendations document, and by the way, it's signed by 27 industry partners, represent really a cross-section of, I think, different actors in the space sector today. That's really exciting to see, first of all. I think for us, it's a way to say, look, there are some concrete aspects that we talk about here. But this also sets a long-term vision and a high-level vision. And let's be clear, these are not the most technical and detailed guidelines or recommendations. The document is about three pages. But what it is probably targeting, more so than even the actual space sector, is actually probably targeting stakeholders outside of the space sector. And I think this is what is exciting. You can take this document to policymakers, to investors, to other stakeholders, and say, look, this is where we are with a significant part of industry actors. And hopefully, more will join as well. This is not a definitive end game here. It doesn't stop here. And this is what we're thinking about. And this is some of the principles and elements we're actually not only concerned about, but want to move forward. So I think this is exciting. We hope that policymakers will actually take this on board and say, look, OK, some of these things are not so far-fetched, perhaps, as there were maybe a few years ago. Industry is already thinking and actually committing and signing on to these things. And so that helps also form their mindsets about if you are thinking about new regulations. On the other hand, I think it's interesting. It helps create a new playing field in a way. And through these recommendations, we push that level playing field into more and more ambitious territory in terms of sustainable operations. And I think this is what's so exciting about this. And again, happy to be able to announce these and release these here at this event. I think the industry support for this is really so important. And we obviously have some of the 27 signatories in the room today. Bryn, I'd like you to walk us through a little bit about kind of where, what was the driving force behind GHG SAT support of these guidelines? And you've had some, GHG SAT has had some firsthand experience with a threat of space debris, hoping you can talk a little bit about how that impacted your desire to sign on to these. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jacqueline, and thanks to the Secure World Foundation for having us here. And particularly for having GHG SAT here. We're a smaller operator. But when it comes to industry, I think we need to have kind of all partners that are working in this environment, working together to define solutions. So we're really excited to be a part of this discussion. And of course, thanks to all of you for being a part of this discussion as well. So for those of you that don't know GHG SAT, we're a satellite company that operates a constellation of nine satellites currently, but a growing one that monitors greenhouse gas emissions from space. And we're able to pinpoint specifically where these emissions are coming from so that we can help with mitigation efforts by carbon-intensive industries to help combat the global heating. So there's naturally, based on our mission and what we're trying to achieve in terms of sustainability on Earth, there's naturally a draw for us to participate in efforts like this. Because for us to be able to do our work, which is trying to build sustainability here on Earth, we need to have a sustainable environment and space for us to operate, because there's a risk to all operators that are operating within space, particularly within the environment that we're operating within, which is the low Earth orbit. So there's this natural inclination to come to the table because we need to find a solution for all partners that work. So that was obviously an initial driving force. But the other thing to think about is what are the actual applications that satellite technologies are used for? We have constellations like ours that are actively monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. We have other operators in the room that collect imagery that allow us to track environmental change and impacts on different ecosystems. We have new satellites that are coming up in the fold that are monitoring wildfires, which, as all of those of you in New York know the impacts of, it's critical things that all these satellites do that are working towards a sustainable future here on Earth. And I think we can never really separate the idea of having a sustainable environment from having a sustainable Earth. And that's one of the key reasons why we wanted to participate in this. And if I just may add, I'm excited to be here and presenting this with you, Brynne, and with G-Sat, I think there are lots of terrific companies, of course, of course, that signed on. We are excited with having you guys and speaking here with you. As you said, the sustainability aspect is critical. Everybody's focused on sustainability on Earth. We have to be, as we've said multiple times today, we have to be watching over the sustainability of the orbital regimes and thinking continuously about how to improve that. And so I think you are very representative of the companies that are thinking about both of these elements at the same time. And we think it's also quite exciting, right? And there's probably going to be a little bit of a change in the sector where companies have to start to show how they behave. And as the issue of debris and sustainability becomes more and more pronounced, and sort of general population and folks outside the space sector start to appreciate the seriousness of this. And we think these kind of efforts, and again, there are other efforts there. We strongly believe these all complementary help showcase that behavior, right? And help put a value on your emissions, right? And put sort of the social value, right? A little bit linking to that is a cheap discussion. You've touched on the fact that this is obviously not the only set of orbital debris mitigation guidelines. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit deeper about what the World Economic Forum hopes to add to kind of this existing body of work and how you see these particular guidelines sort of where they're different and how they will complement the things that do already exist. How you see them all kind of playing nice together. Yeah, well, it's a great question, right? And I think, you know, natural item that comes up is, you know, let's not duplicate things, right? And of course, we talk about that often. You know, we see progress in when you talk about potential collisions growing risk of debris as moving forward, but probably moving forward slowly, right? Again, I think this is something most of us can agree on. The number of other efforts are there and typically they're much more technical, right? They're much more sort of in the weeds, but they're absolutely critical. You know, we need that to be able to actually try to align and create the standards and understand who moves out of the way. You know, space safety coalition, you know, obviously had their updated document put out just recently, absolutely critical. You know, will folks from outside the space sector really read and go through all the bullets and understand them and appreciate them, right? And really understand that, maybe, right? But I think what we need to start communicating and getting as a sector passing on the message about, you know, we appreciate the challenge, right? And this is some of the things we're talking about, right? And a little bit more different tone, perhaps. And you're communicating to a different audience. This is, I think, what this is about. And, you know, the other thing is, you know, practically, sometimes as a mission, you may be wanting to commit to all these things. Maybe you already have missions on the way that doesn't quite fit and you want to be very careful about what you commit to. And so you might sign on to one document, you might also sign on to the other, but actually jointly, if you look at different signatories to different efforts, you actually see that everybody's sort of thinking about the same things, right? And there may be minor discrepancy. But that's actually good, right? It means that an actor is not signing on just to random things. They actually are a responsible actor. They're signing on to things that they believe in and they commit to, right? But together jointly as a sector, if you look across the board, you know, everybody's sort of moving together and moving forward and sort of moving that bar, and I don't think it can, it can't be understated, like how much this is all cumulative, right? There's no one solution to all of this. And I think what we need to realize is like you said, pulling together these different documents where different partners have agreed to different things. They're all working towards the same goal. There might be different approaches and nuances to the numbers and the ways in which you accomplish it, but all of these form this complex solution to how we actually address this challenge. So I think that can't be understated. It's all cumulative together. I think it's very interesting that in some ways, you know, industry by signing on to this is actually putting more requirements onto itself than it would otherwise need to. So, Bryn, I'm curious how you see industry's role in, you know, driving this conversation. Is this a conversation that needs to really be led by industry with the help of organizations like the forum? So I think it's a parallel process. I think that there needs to be work done, like we've heard from many, many speakers today, through, you know, regulatory bodies, policy thinkers, governments trying to come up with long-term solutions. But the other kind of theme that we've heard throughout the day is we need to act now. And I think that the only way in which we can act now is by having the people that are actually operating into space actually agreeing to things that will have an impact. So from my perspective, I look at this, you know, these frameworks that we're coming to together as a starting point that we're committing to holding ourselves accountable to, and at least starting the effort that we need to. And my hope is that that will then form a sort of foundation that all these other great, all this other great work that is ongoing and parallel will then be able to learn from that. It was actually, Rebecca that was saying earlier today that, you know, by having these sort of voluntary practices coming into effect, we actually get to test, you know, the system a bit and see what works and what doesn't work, see if it's effective, see if it actually blocks, you know, new entrants to the market that are actually really going to be key for long-term solutions. So in my mind, yes, we're holding ourselves to some strict standards, but I think it's a really exciting starting point that we'll then be able to build off of. Well, if I may build on that. I mean, look, the organizations signing on to our recommendations to other ones, you know, they know this is, you know, the right direction to move to, right? Otherwise, we will not have the business models that we're able to function, right? If we have, you know, a growing problem with debris, just we won't have all these business opportunities they're going to be able to realize. And let's face it, you know, the market is still, potential market is huge, right? We are going to, as the forum, starting a new effort this year, looking at the future of the space economy and probably having a 10-year horizon, but actually looking also at the sub-sectors of that and what are the some things that are going to be coming on the market that are not there yet, really also having this sort of social lens of how does that benefit us on earth? More and more industries will come in and participate in the broader space market. But we're not going to be able to realize all these opportunities, right? For us on earth, if we can't solve the debris challenge. So I think these are important. The companies are realizing this. You know, they're also signing on to things which are ambitious but are realistic. They're not out of the ballpark in terms of something that's not realistic for them, of course, otherwise they wouldn't be there. They have their business models to function with. But it's also, again, you know, it's also something that they realize, you know, regulators and policy makers are thinking about. And so, you know, if we already can sort of get ahead of some of these challenges and commit to some things, if they probably position themselves and they'll find themselves probably in a better way if there are regulations and when they come in the future, right? But it also hopefully helps the regulators and policy makers in a way as well to show a little bit where the industry is heading. So I think it's sort of a win-win for different actors and but it shows sort of, you know, that the industry certainly is thinking about the right things and moving in the right direction. And also, I mean, we're, we know the bounds of what's feasible, right? And I think that helps a lot in the discussion because, you know, we never want to implement something that will actually prevent us from being able to operate and have all these great applications here on Earth. So there's that and what I also found really encouraging as part of the discussions that we were having when we were trying to come up with these guidelines was that we were also considering not just, you know, all the partners at the table, we were really thinking about, okay, well, what about people that are not at this table yet? What about the countries that are kind of in the early stages of developing, you know, a space industry? How can we create something that will not block them from being able to bring new solutions to the table? And so that was really like a positive discussion that I appreciated going to those guidelines. So we've gotten a question from the audience about sort of the elephant in the room or I guess the elephant not in the room. There are obviously, while there are a number of signatories to this who are planning big, big constellations and they've, you know, committed to these standards, there are also some companies, notably SpaceX, you know, planning a major constellation that has not signed onto these guidelines. So Nikolai, can you talk a little bit about, you know, efforts to bring additional companies into the fold and kind of the fact that some of these major players who are going to be putting up large number of satellites are not committing to this particular framework? So I think it's a good question and I think I'll probably, you know, turn around a little bit, right? What I will say is that actually it was a pretty comprehensive effort. Of course, you know, we were not engaging with every single operator and every single manufacturer and every single launch provider. But we were engaging actually with, I will leave it as, you know, a lot of significant actors, right? If some actors didn't sign on, I don't think it's a sign that, you know, they're against these standards or not standards but recommendations, right? And positions that we propose in the document, right? I think we should take it as a sign. We'll look, actually we had a lot of helpful input from number of actors who actually didn't sign on, right? I'll maybe I'll say that way without mentioning any specific companies, right? It doesn't mean that they don't believe in the specific numbers, right? And it's, you know, there were, of course there was a lot of discussion about specific, you know, angles and this and that and that's normal in this kind of efforts. Again, trying to generate consensus, right? Around certain wording as we've heard before is difficult. But it means that companies maybe think slightly differently, right? Or they say, well, look, you know, we actually have perhaps our own perspective on this and we're doing something a little bit different. So we want to be careful, right? It actually shows to a certain extent. I think, you know, that organizations are responsible. They want to, you know, stick to what they say or what they've said in the past or what they want to say maybe in the few months and because it fits their mission a little bit differently. And so I think I'm actually, I was very encouraged by the process, you know, in all honesty, we had very good discussions. And again, not everybody that was part of the discussion came on board, but they were all very engaged. They were all participated, right? And committed to the process and to actually moving some of these goalposts, right? Forward and advancing the whole discussion. So. So in terms of kind of the nuts and bolts of the policy has the five-year deorbit, the requirement to be able to maneuver an increased sharing of space traffic management data. Brynn, I'm curious for GHGSat, sort of how much you will need to change your current operations to meet these requirements? How different are they from how you guys operate today? Well, we come from a kind of a unique space in that when we kind of started kind of quickly growing the rest of our constellation, we were already in this realm while we realized it was gonna be a bit of a challenge. You know, I've been with GHGSat now for two years and over the course of that period of time, you know, we've seen the number of potential collision events increase with our constellation size and you kind of oftentimes see a step function happening when there's another significant launch that comes from one of the large satellite operators. So, you know, coming into the role at the time that I did, we needed to very quickly, already before engaging in this discussion, come up with new practices because it was in our own interest to do that because we needed to come up with solutions. So really, you know, from the guidelines that have been we've established, we were already working towards that already. So it wasn't actually that much of an uphill climb. I mean, the, you know, things like sharing data, that is something that we're able to do through platforms that already exist and we're now engaging with new platforms already to be able to make it easier having inter like operator communication. In terms of the active maneuvering, you know, we're a small set that doesn't have a propulsion system, although of course the recommendations do say that that is a positive attribute to have on a satellite because it makes it a lot easier to maneuver but there are other, you know, ways of maneuvering such as through differential drag which, you know, we put upfront investment in terms of finding solution to actually be able to maneuver in space without having a propulsion system because it was important for us to be able to do so. In terms of the five-year deorbitat at the end of mission life, we as a general principle already determined that when, you know, a satellite comes to the end of its commercial operations that we would continue maintaining active, monitoring and maneuverability of that object until it re-entered the atmosphere. So these are all things that we were working towards already because it was a necessity already and also we wanted to live up to the mission of being a sustainable company. I mean, just maybe to build on a quick point, we actually had one very concrete impact also of this, right? And I'm sure there were others, you know, I'm sure there are others as well, but I actually heard from one of the companies that are a little bit more in the early stage that one of the bullet points in the statement actually impacted directly how they were planning and how they were planning the operations and certain quantitative aspects linked to the mission, right, in the sort of positive sense and they were actually said, well, we can do that, you know, otherwise I wouldn't want to commit because I wasn't sure or this would actually be, you know, a little bit higher, a little bit lower. We're going to make an effort here, right? Again, was that something that was changing the mission completely? Probably not, but they made a specific effort to improve one of the characteristics. And hey, that's a good outcome. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to delve a little bit into the idea of voluntary guidelines. These are obviously guidelines as are most, if not all, of the recommendations that deal with this type of thing. You know, it's something that you both have touched on and something that obviously earlier panels were debating as well, but kind of in the light of these recommendations, Nikolai, wondering kind of to get your thoughts on how far voluntary guidelines can go and if, you know, if there was any thought at the forum to do something enforceable, sort of, or if kind of voluntary guidelines were the only way to go to get consensus. Tough question. Well, look, yeah, we've spoken a lot about this already today, right? I think in the absence of other mechanisms, which are firmer and stricter, right, these are already doing a certain part of the job. You know, this was a specific ask from our community to do something in this regard, to push the envelope a little bit, to support, you know, and to complement, again, other efforts, so I'll come back to that. They play an important role, whether or not regulation will come in and, you know, and take some of these, perhaps, build on some of these different recommendations and guidelines, I guess, you know, we will see that. Is there an opportunity for us? You know, we are not a regulatory body, we don't stand official sort of standards, if you want to make, differentiate a little bit, but, you know, we're certainly a platform that brings together industry, government, and civil society experts to try to find ways, you know, and try to unlock things, stalemates, perhaps, where there is need to, right, and where other platforms can't quite address this. So, you know, we're always open to, you know, to help address some of these challenges. Let's see in the future if there is a need, if there's a specific ask from our partners, from perhaps even certain governments for us to help, but that's something that the forum does, and again, this is a small step, obviously, in that direction. We hope it's a helpful step, but let's see what we can do in the future. Bram, I'd love to get you on this as well from the industry perspective. So, I think there's a kind of natural self-checking on this. Yes, it's voluntary, but we signed on to it because we commit to doing it, and I think that, you know, one of the things we were talking about earlier today was the idea of a lot of people coming to the workplace, especially younger people who are driven by mission, and they're driven by purpose, and they want to see their company living up to the values that they're committing to, and so I think there's this natural kind of self-checking that happens because we've committed to it, and now all of our, and we've publicly declared it, and so all of our employees are then gonna hold this accountable to this as they should, and so I think there will be a natural self-checking that comes from that because people do care about the mission. Great, we have just a minute left, but I'm gonna try to squeeze in one more. The report mentions new technologies and potentially even new industries that could be created by companies trying to adhere to the requirements of this report. Nikolai, do you have any quick thoughts on sort of new industries and new capabilities that might crop up to help companies stick to these guidelines? Well, again, this is something actually, we're starting to look now, and hopefully we'll have something out for January 2024. Our theory, I guess, a theory of change is that all industry will have a role to play or will have an activity linked to space, right? It's maybe a case to a certain degree right now, probably a lot of industry actors don't realize they're getting a lot of benefits from space as we all sort of know, but it's probably gonna be much more pronounced in a more sort of coherent way, right? We think companies from across all the different sectors will have either a strategy or a department or a policy in terms of interacting with the space sector or being part of the space sector, right? Again, this is something that's a question that we're sort of gonna try to test and verify over the next sort of six, seven months. We'll see what the results are and we'll be obviously interacting with all these different actors and playing out some of these scenarios. But we think certainly, I think what's undeniable probably is if we do this right, if we manage our orbital resources correctly and sustainably, the opportunities that are on the horizon for us as a civilization, if I may use that big word, are tremendous. We'll be able to do so many more things for us on Earth but also for us in space, but we have to do it right. Well, that's such a hopeful note to end on. I hope everyone in the audience goes and reads the report. I found it very interesting. Thank you so much to both of you gentlemen for being here today for this. And now I am going to hand back to Crystal to close for the day. Thank you very much.