 With the objective, and this is different than other nations, but with the objectives of building capacity in science and technology and engineering and elevating the capabilities when it comes to design and manufacturing for systems. As everybody knows, the UAE is a natural resource dependent economy. And science and technology for us is the future for when we're talking about a post-oil economy. It is where we want the dynamo of our economy to actually base that off. And hence, the space program is actually there to develop that foundation. And for us to be able to create that sort of monumental shift to attract more people into STEM, what better way to do it than to have a mission that explores another planet. And that has created a movement not only within those that are within the engineering and the science fields in the UAE, but it has created quite a movement in children at schools and change their perception of what they can do, not only attracting them to STEM, but it's expanded their horizon when it comes to what change they would like to have on the world, how they foresee the future, and what impact them as individuals would like to do. And this is one of the main drivers of the Emirates Mars mission. It's the first mission out of the region to explore another planet, and it's meant to study the planet and provide new data, scientific data to the science community around the world. So not only is it there to impact the country, it is also there to increase understanding on the planet Mars. And so this is the Hope Mars probe mission. Yes. And in some ways it's sort of a case study for our new age of space exploration. Can you just tell us some of the collaborations that are involved here in this mission in addition to your own team? So within the team itself, our initial approach was capacity development, as I've said. And the timeline that we've gotten is quite different than other missions. Other missions usually get about 10 years to launch a spacecraft to Mars. We had about six years to launch a spacecraft to Mars for several reasons. One reason being we would like to innovate the way programs are approached for planetary exploration missions. And this is what a lot of new space entrants are actually doing because there's... So heritage is great, but with heritage comes a lot of baggage of failed missions that is incurred into the design and development process of space. New entrants of space can look at it from a different perspective because that baggage doesn't exist from decades ago. And the approach for international collaboration was actually to go to research institutions and work with them because their primary objective is to generate knowledge and to create new knowledge and to share knowledge. And therefore we're currently working in partnership with the University of Colorado. They have got a lab out of there called the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics last. And also we're working with scientists to develop our scientific capabilities when it comes especially to physics and research about the planetary atmosphere with the Arizona State University and also with the University of California Berkeley at the Space Science Lab SSL. And your launch will be out of Japan next year with a private space? Absolutely. So our launch will be using Mitsubishi heavy instruments. It's out of Japan. So if you're talking about international mission, our endeavors have always been international. And one of our primary when it comes to Earth observation, one of our primary partners of South Korea. So this is sort of giving a perspective of the non-typical sort of space nations that come to people's minds like ESA and NASA. It's actually global players, so many global players that are currently entering the space race that are supporting the development. Yeah. And so it's not because of this whole ecosystem that's developed, it makes it accessible to beyond the traditional space powers. Alice, I want to bring you in UK Space Agency. Can you talk us through your focus there? Yeah, sure. I mean, fantastic to hear of the ambition coming from the UAE Space Program. I mean, it's really, really inspiring. And I think in the UK, we're also very ambitious in our space programs. I will probably highlight three areas of focus at the moment. So we have recently announced our ambition to enable launch from UK soil. So we hope to do that in the early 2020s. And that is in recognition largely of the subject today, the new space age. We recognize that missions are changing. They're not all these great big institutional birds anymore. We have a whole range of missions and increasingly they're getting smaller in size and that opens up a new opportunity for launch. So that's one area that we're really excited about. I think also exploration, I share the excitement there. For most of us, efforts on exploration have been focused on the International Space Station for the last 20 years or so. And I think that's been an absolute marvel of international cooperation. You know, 103 countries have been involved. And we'll come back to that model in a few minutes, yeah. So, but now, right, now we've got a blank sheet of paper. So fantastic. And we're really excited about that. Again, we're really excited about what the new space age can offer to that. We're particularly interested in what new commercial models can be applied to exploration. We're used to thinking of our space missions as being incredibly cutting edge and therefore largely the domain of government funding to drive forward science and technology. And whilst that is still true, there are other areas where our space programs are quite mature and we can look at different procurement models. And then I think the third area, we've recently announced a 150 million program with developing countries. So we have this program, we're engaged with 29 different countries, targeting 10 different sustainable development goals. And there's some fantastic real world benefits coming from those programs. And to my mind, that's a really interesting interpretation of the new space age as well. I was on a panel this morning talking about oceans. And with communities that we're not always speaking with and highlighting a project that we have in Malaysia where they're concerned about the mangrove coastline and the deterioration there. And just highlighting the fact that from space, you can pick up those signals. So the deterioration is coming from oil spills, from boats illegally flushing out oils. That signature from space is really clear. So using our space technology, we're really able to bring those down to earth benefits on earth. So I hate to ask this right away, but I do want to ask you about Brexit because you are the UK space agency and have worked as part of your European space agency. How does the UK space agency anticipate being innovative, competitive, post-EU? Yeah, absolutely. When I listen, space is an international endeavour. It will always be an international endeavour. We will always cooperate internationally for the delivery of missions and we will always cooperate internationally for the safety of the operating environment. We will continue to be a very strong participant in the European space agency. We're looking forward to the next ministerial meeting, that point at which we make new commitments to new programs at the end of this year. Bear in mind the last time we had one such meeting, it was at the end of 2016. We had already had our referendum and at that meeting, we were the number one contributor to all of the European space agency applications program. So telecommunications, navigation, earth observation. I think that's a really strong signal. Rick, I want to pull you in and talk a little bit about what Lockheed Martin is doing. Maybe we can focus on the Orion program because you're building a spacecraft in Cape Canaveral, I think, right at the moment. Absolutely. At the Cape, very exciting now. Orion is getting down that final integration at the Operations and Checkout Center there at the Cape, getting ready for next year's launch. And when reinforced, both at Allison Cerro said, it is an international endeavour. So what happened about a month ago is Europe delivered the service module that will be integrated with Orion and eventually fly. This will be the final test flight that will not have astronauts to validate the safety and the effectiveness of design and make sure we got everything right. We'll go out beyond the moon coming back. We're getting pretty excited about that and seeing that. And building on Cerro said about STEM because we're all struggling with driving kids and stuff and filling engineering roles and STEM roles. But that motivates seeing a launch, seeing that much more than maybe kids sitting and texting on the couch. But given that aspiration and what they can see and do, and I think that's a global perspective and I think every country, Alice mentioned 103 countries. We know it doubled. I can keep the count. But the pace of innovation right now and this new space age is huge, right? And that's what's key. Yeah, and so I want to we're going to get into some of the specific policy and other questions that you all are anticipating as we get into this next phase. Before we do, I just want to ask if you would also characterize what this kind of where we're at and how to how we all should think about say the next five or 10 years in terms of key developments and and Rick, just to continue with you, Orion is is meant to be a manned lunar mission as a as a sort of building block for the development of a lunar economy. And this is something that if all goes well, we can anticipate these sort of missions within a few years from now, right? That's correct. So, you know, I know the, you know, the US government and administration with NASA is focused on helping develop that lay the foundation, not just for the funding of Orion, which it starts with the moon and there's a lunar gateway, but ultimately have a safe travel to Mars. And we kind of not to just play around with words, but you know, people are talking about a race. We like competitive spirit, but where's the endpoint? Mars is not the end. That's a stepping stone. We want to explore there's too much to go look at out there. I mean, in our lifetimes. Yeah, I love to be in lifetime. But we're going to do it safely, right? Step by step. But yeah, I think in our lifetimes, you'll see not just going back to the moon, but staying. Yeah, and it's going to have to be multinational and international. And real exciting about develop those technologies, then we can go further out and be safer to get folks out and back safely. Yeah. So I want to ask you similarly, how would you what do you anticipate in terms of key developments? For now, probably an increase in international collaboration, because exploration cannot be sustained, like everybody said here, not be sustained by any one nation could be it can't be sustained by any one entity. And there's a lot of opportunity for actually new entities to come into the playing field. And that's the next direction next stepping point when it comes to exploration in general. And there's new business cases actually to be made. There's companies that that you were talking earlier, maybe if you can elaborate on that on the lunar economy, there's a lot of things that could happen to make status planter exploration viable. And there's a lot of roles and businesses that have not been created nor have they been defined. And that's the direction that a new space age could take. Yeah, Alice, what's your view? Yeah, I mean, very much echoing the comments that made already. And I think, you know, we will see an increase in international cooperation. You know, but we will still have competition. And it's quite interesting, because the competition is obviously is key to driving the pace, right driving the pace of our innovation. So we have to find a model where we can get that competition. But we can also get cooperation. And that will be particularly true of things like, you know, the lunar economy, you know, we're going to need, we need standards, we're going to need to enable interoperability. I'm sorry, everyone thought they were going to hear about exciting news page. I'm talking about standards about policy. But you know, these are the things that are going to be the kind of the foundational blocks for are the furthering our international cooperation. I want to dig into some of these things which so we have international cooperation, which is great. But we also there are some messier components of this and just to start at a very basic level, the oversight governance of the use of space. And in particular, you know, 2018, we saw a launch that wasn't a registered launch out of India. We have lots of questions about, you know, space junk to use the technical term and how and how we keep it this these areas safe and well regulated. How concerned are you all about the the state of the oversight in some of these areas? And what's needed next? Go ahead. Okay, sir. So we just talked about how many countries are coming in. There's over 900 startup companies Yeah, that I know of, probably through the US and some countries, and we probably don't have a full account. Yeah, you see. So the innovation pace and everything is is way out probably in front of the regulatory environment. So one of the panels and groups we've been with that the World Economic Forum is focusing on sustainability. So in the past, it was so bad, we didn't worry about we put up lots of small satellites didn't worry what happened left them up there. And right now we have to do it at a voluntary basis. But we need if you take a small satellite up, cubes at research, we need to orbit those. Yeah, and right now we'll probably set up some kind of voluntary framework. But at some point, you know, this is going to have to be a government entities will have to figure out what are the right policies. And deorbiting means that that you get them to burn up or come back a little burn up in the atmosphere as they come back down because, you know, you're moving a high velocity everything up there is very dangerous at that debris for for human travel. Yeah. Alice, what about you're probably involved. Exactly. I think it's fascinating. I think we will, you know, in the next few years, we will see a fair bit of regulatory reform. I think we have to appreciate that, you know, the regulation of the space environment has been pretty effective, actually. I mean, there have been incidents, but it has been pretty effective to date. But those structures were conceived at a time when the space sector was vastly different. You know, there was many, many fewer players, big satellites, the risk of collision was much lower. Now we've got nearly 2000 active satellites, we've got hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk. So we have to find a new way of operating and just building on Rick's point, actually, I think it is interesting and that's why it's been a discussion here, actually, at WEF, trying to understand how we will keep the safety of the operating environment. And there is a real appetite from industry to take a lead here. So whilst the regulatory responsibility will ultimately always fall to government, there is also a real recognition in the industry and they are incentivized to find safer operations because at the end of the day, if there is a collision in space, then everyone stands to lose. And is there a consensus approach at this point? We're developing one. Okay, so stay tuned, Sarah. It's just important just to add as a caveat, any regulations that would need to come to place should take into consideration new entrants into space and not make it over, not make it beneficial to those that already have access to space because they have the technology to deorbit, etc. And on the other hand, handicap new entrants into space. So as has regulations been before, this is a new interesting time for plantar exploration. And this is something to look at when we're talking about regulations. Yeah, that's a comment. I agree with you a lot. We have to be careful with that. One thing we talked about in the forum there is for instance, I know NASA and I'm probably you said they actually put online how to do that. And it's a pretty simple system like in a deorbit case that you'd be anybody, any country can download at no cost. Go do that very simple system. So and I think, you know, as a community, we just have to make sure we don't we don't want to shut down that innovation and that participation. I agree 100% with you. Yeah. So there's another there's another so that's a basic framework. There's another group of issues that we're going to start confronting with some of these lunar missions, especially so the Moon is obviously a big focus for exploration now, especially with the confirmation of water on the surface. Is there a risk of a land grab given a relatively ambiguous framework now for how countries or parties, whoever they are, are able to claim locations, resources, anything in a place like the Moon? Alice, you're laughing. I think your description of relatively ambiguous is very generous. That's very, very extremely ambiguous. I think so. I think so. And you know, none of us have the answer today. Yeah. My sense is, you know, where we're talking about, you know, any kind of interference with the moon, be it mining, be it resource, what have you, where we are doing that in the interests of all of mankind, where we are doing that in international collaborations as a stepping stone to enable further exploration activities, we may be able to find a consensus. Yeah. I think the difficulty will come is where those activities are being carried out solely for economic gain. Yeah. And that's a different... And my understanding is currently the basic governing principle is pretty vague and it's basically the principle of non-interference. So if there is an activity that's going on, another party can't move your probe or that sort of thing, which obviously creates complications as you are. Some regulations, so some of the regulatory frameworks, what they're currently looking at is to adopt something similar to international waters that we have here. That's discussions that are ongoing. I'm not sure where they went, but I think they're on one of the UN platforms on how to do it. But like she said, the ambiguous is very generous of when you're trying to explain that. If you have access to space, you can literally go there and do anything. And particularly as we get into things like a lunar economy, Rick, as you were talking about, where there are specific resources that are being cited. And some people already have identified specific real estate on the moon that has continuous solar power, effectively continuous the peaks of eternal light as being a potential places where there could be a serious land grab going on. Yeah, we have to build that economy and I think what we'll face in, as Al said, to these issues. I mean, if you think about a lot of these policies and government agreements were put in place a long time ago before we were going to have such a robust exploration. So as we move out and more people move out, it's going to have to be picked up by the agreements reached across government entities and regulators to establish that. Is the ISS, International Space Station, any model in this regard? Alice, you've obviously interacted with them. I think inevitably, there must be best practice that we can learn from the ISS, but I think we should also recognize we are at a different point in space exploration. Those models were conceived 20, 30 years ago. And non-commercial contacts, largely. The sector looks very... Limited number of public administrations involved in negotiations. Absolutely. I mean, I see certainly ambiguity is much closer to earth as well. So some of the really exciting things I think happening around innovations for in-orbit servicing, for instance, are really exciting, but our existing structures don't enable that new market opportunity, don't enable that new capability. I mean, to give an example, just the spectrum app filing process, you know, the principle is that you go up to one orbit and you stay there. It's not designed to enable some of these new innovations, which I think will be very powerful for our space programs. So it needs everything. So in orbit servicing means that you're able to change your orbits and actually service the equipment that's up there. Absolutely. Or extend the life of existing missions. Yeah. Well, not too complicated. When we start doing more travel and more going out to space, you know, there'll be a big push to manufacture in space or on the moon with additive. That's why we hear people talking about asteroid mining. Not to bring back, but we need resources to go do that. That's going to open up a whole field of complicated. And is the ambiguity currently an obstacle to commercial interest starting to activate against the opportunities that you're talking about? Or there's still a little bit of time? I think there's enough time. I mean, we clearly, anything we do or, you know, we're working on one of the contracts NASA let that's a come, you know, how to take commercial capability to the lunar surface. I mean, they will, they will oversee that we make sure we comply and, you know, we always want to comply with all the regulatory framework. Yeah. But again, you know, as more people come in, it's like cited here with serenalist, it's going to be more complicated as we move forward. You can project forward 10 years and more capabilities. There'll have to be some new regulatory standards established. So right now it's things that nations actually take on to themselves where they say that just for the benefit of humankind, you're not going to do it. And whether or not there are signatories on some, on some of the agreements. For example, he's not a signatory on planetary protection, but our spacecraft has all the planetary protection standards and it's getting the necessary certifications from planetary protection at NASA and at JAXA. So at two, at two major space agencies, although we're not signatories. So right now we're at a point where we're relying more and more on the good of, of the players that are entering into space that they don't, that this is a valuable resource to humanity and it's, and we're pretty small in the larger scale of things and we are there, we are then not to do any harm to it or damage future prospects basically. So we're currently relying on the good will. I want to switch to another area which is about bad will or bad faith or conflict because this is given some of the military applications and, and potential conflicts. This is another area that, that we're going to have to grapple with as well. We're going to come in, in a few minutes we'll, we'll work through some of these issues and then come out to the room to pull you all in. So if you have questions we'll be coming to you, be coming to you in a few minutes. So how do we, how do we approach the space to make sure it's not a zone of conflict and tension and you know the issues of geopolitical aggression that are being discussed in every single other room in here practically. What's the, how are we going to do that? Alice, you want to start? I think the start point is you know we must never lose sight of the fact that actually it is in everyone's collective interests to maintain that safety of the operating environment. I mean it's, it's such an unusual sector in that respect where you know the aggressor can equally be the victim of his own actions. You know it's, it's not normal. So we really have to never forget to reinforce that. And I think, I think that will be at the heart of whatever measures we take. I do think, is that just to, on that point, is that different than the earth where, where it's you know arguably in no one's interest to, to initiate an armed conflict but yet it happens constantly. Yeah I think it is. I mean I, so I use the analogy you can think of orbits as like ring roads around major cities but if you have an accident on a ring road on a motorway okay that's bad but ultimately you can you know remove those damaged vehicles and you can reopen the road in space. There's none of that. You know you can't get the vehicles away and you can't stop more vehicles piling in from behind. So I do think it's at a different scale. Of course conflict is, is bad news. You know wherever it happens but I think the, the damage that you will do to the space opera, operating environment is very much affecting every operator. Now I think, I think what's interesting is as we see an increasing number of players, as we see an increasing number of active satellites and pieces of debris we will have to turn our minds again to how we manage you know the space situational awareness, how we manage access to that information. I mean that's, that data exists and it has been very much in a closed system with the US military and there's been very good arguments to do that but I think we have to take this point of inflection and ask ourselves is it still right that it is that closed system and should we be working through international collaborations to find a way where all operators can get access to the information they need for safe operations. Yeah, Ricky we're gonna No I'd say look uh you know I mean I also have very good points there with the bell on that we talk about space but there's a $370 billion economy or industry sitting around that that's here you disrupt space you disrupt you know your navigation system down here if you could use GPS the ability to do you know if you damage a weather satellite to protect life and property and get warnings out it is interrelated to you know how the entire you know global economic system is what is the $370 billion that's the estimate of the current size of the space economy if you will okay and that's primarily satellite communications and well the total wrap up yeah everything that you'd say is space between launch and everything else yeah by the little aside you know everybody's you know we see launch all the time it's really yeah it's really you know public sees it it's a inversely proportion it's only 3% of that total value 60% of that is in terrestrial systems and processing and the rest in space but the new space age if you listen to Morgan Stanley by 2040s to be $1 trillion yeah so to get there we don't want anything happening in space that would cost the debris that would damage our assets or anything because that would impact that valuation just to stay on you for one second and then maybe we'll pulse area but how confident are you that the conflicts here won't actually extend and the rivalries won't extend to there you have the two principal the leads on the space agents on the space station you have the US and Russia which are in some sort of new cold war you have China's own ambitions and I find it hard to imagine that the rivalries here won't actually spill into some of these areas particularly given the ambiguity so maybe Rick and then Alice well I'll let Alice probably comment the most on that I'm not an expert in this area but I think governments will have to talk about how do they manage this as more and more people go up there we are going to have to set up systems and have certain levels of security agreements we're going to have to make our satellites and things more resilient and capable because just getting more crowded up there there's even risk of some incident not even nefarious purposes just something happening or colliding or whatever so we're going to have to deal with this Alice mentioned kind of the space management of the things you know look at the look at the early days of the airline industry right you didn't you didn't worry about flying when there weren't too many planes in the air and then we had to create an entire air traffic traffic so and I think that's why the current US administration was leaning and put that in our department of commerce so that could be shared and work cooperatively with other governments so we can understand that but they I don't know if anybody has derived the policies yet of how you manage that do you do an altitude differentiation or a orbit regime they're all studying this now to say what makes sense for the future Sarah just to get your perspective on this there are all these conflicts you're a party to this arena but a different sort of power do you have confidence that there won't be a militarization of space and extension of the conflicts that are great apart from the examples that they gave our lives depend on space assets whether we know it or not yeah no one from the moment that they wake up throughout a 24-hour day does not use something that is in space and it's something that is very essential to our lives and this is something that is I think understood across the globe yeah and a basic example is every time you take money from a automated cash machine it's actually using GPS which is your phones cameras here television access to information access to weather just waking up in the morning knowing how to get dressed and getting out that's because there is weather satellites out there covering all the earth and I can only point to historic examples where this hasn't happened so International Space Station is a very good example today there has been so many conflicts with different countries that are that are part of that and it has ebbed and flowed but the International Space Station has continued to provide research and scientific outcomes regardless of politics and at the height of the Cold War the US and the USSR collaborated on a joint mission in space when they were both actually competing with each other on the space race so just due to historic evidence it is not to the benefit of any nation to go down that path yeah Alice and then we're gonna open it up to the room really just to re-emphasize what Sarah was saying actually because I think you know none of us have a crystal ball and it is evident that there's a lot of isolationist behavior on earth at the moment but we have a fantastic track record you know it was the late 70s it was the height of the Cold War and we had over 70 countries collaborating on a global scientific experiment which was to lay the foundations for the first global weather forecasting capability you know sensitive satellite technology built by US, Russia, China, Japan and Europe I mean that's extraordinary I think we can take some comfort from history here so maybe space will be the exception to humanity's conflicts so space should actually be a very good learning venue on how to do good politics yeah and look as we start doing human travel in space that's a dangerous endeavor yeah and we have to cooperate and then you have if you get someone in distress other nations are going to have to help each other out to the end is get you know protect the life of the astronaut and get them back home there are a bunch of Hollywood films about some of the scenarios that you're talking about so we'll see how it plays out I want to open the discussion up to the room here we have a microphone if you could stand up we'll bring you a microphone right here that would be great if you could state your name and if you have any organization affiliation sure yeah I'm Jaydeep I'm a global shaper from India I work on electrifying villages in the Himalayas interesting thing is the European Space Agency contacted us because they said now we have satellites with which we can monitor which areas of the world now don't have access to energy and so we are collaborating with them on a pilot project in India so just two points one is around regulation that you talked about and the way I think about regulation is once you put in regulation and often regulation is always catching up with innovation so suddenly you have drawback effects of putting in the regulation now imagine when people are flying hot air balloons suddenly you had Wright brothers had you regulated the Wright brothers to come up with that innovation they would not have been doing the things that they ended up doing which resulted in the airplanes coming into the picture so how do you see regulation sort of not playing the catch-up game and also not limiting innovation in that sense the second thing is if left to the governments every government after the five year or four year mandate the new government comes in they say okay we are not going to invest into space and I was reading this book which is about beyond space where they talked how the Obama administration curtailed on the space funding and now the Trump administration has sort of opened it so I'm not sure you know if you leave it to the governments how that innovation is going to come about the space age but for the private sector for the Elon Musk and everyone if you do not make it incentive enough to explore the space why would they do that so the entire debate about colonizing Mars or moon there has to be some economic incentive for the private sector to get into so okay so there are two parts of it Alice do you want to speak for the public public sector and then Rick maybe the second part of it the economic incentives would be something you'd have there okay yeah just to take the regulation for it it's an excellent question actually and it's very well observed that you know we've been here before history has taught us before and you're absolutely right over regulation is not the answer and today we absolutely see that regulation reform is not at pace with innovation and I think to my mind the answer is the answer is the same for many tech sectors actually you know we have to be careful not to be too special in space because all these other sectors are having the same challenges you know if you look at fintech you look at AI and the secret I think is firstly governments don't do anything in isolation right governments work very closely with the industry there should be a no surprises policy government should not suddenly introduce in any form of regulation that has not been long anticipated by the private sector that enables both sides to it gives government assurance on being able to you know take appropriate account of safety but it also gives the industry time to innovate and evolve and make sure that we're all operating within the same regime I think inevitably regulatory regime reform will all be slightly behind innovation but I think the key is that government and industry are working very closely together and there is a no surprises no surprises and rick the economic incentives maybe I'm going to build a little bit Al said too is like we always talk about either or government or commercial and it's really has to be both it's an end function because governments invest and for a while build infrastructure and take down risk think computers think internet everything else so that's going on now but you're seeing the agency now push to open this up for commercial commercial is going to need a way to generate a return right whether it's resources whether it's some other capability or it won't hold now there's a lot of activity we mentioned 900 companies I think space angels estimate there's 18 billion in the last several years into startups 3 billion in 2018 alone they're not investing if they're not seeing something that might be there and I want to comment one more things I always get asked a question well you know we want to go to governments want to do commercial now not whatever we do commercial now GPS is a great example it starts a government system for a location but that sort of GPS and of course now as partners in Galileo and others that's engendered tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars of startup industry and everything else there's a great example of how that works together now the first time we go out so let's say go to a lunar environment that's going to be some different models come up different business models people are going to figure out to get a rate of return and the specific commercial activities that people are focused on right now are as you mentioned resources so natural resources mining asteroids the moon wherever and space tourism right isn't aren't those the two primary current ones people are thinking about yeah that and others there's infrastructure ones like I mentioned you know how do you do added manufacturing in space yeah might be you could argue the derivative of you know of the actual effort yeah whatever yeah why don't we let's take another question now there's a question in the front here maybe in someone before okay do you have anybody else who wants to thank you hi I'm Ishten Alson from Quartz2 I kind of like your optimism that all the politics we have in the on a weren't spread to space but I think one of the things we're talking about this week a lot is how governments are changing and they are becoming much more nationalist than even if you don't have a nationalist head of state if you have domestic issues you're forced to focus inwards I mean how can you be so certain that as we go forward that none of those conflicts do do spread over and your point that the US has the data and it needs to be opened up you know right down in the middle of a right now in the middle of a government shutdown how can you be sure that these issues will prevail over domestic problems that we have at the moment thank you you um yeah go ahead well I mean yield to them on the being probably better expert in answering this but look I you know practically speaking whenever we have gone off and explore to come together many people there's always been some level conflict we've had to set up security protocols to deal with that that's going to have but Alice mentioned earlier very well I haven't heard the highway analogy with that for but you know the consequence of that space is dramatic and it'll it'll interfere with any expansion of commerce any expansion of use of space so you know I'm optimistic to get you know though we always have our challenges and things that you know governments have to come together for the good you know of the earth you know there's a lot of talk about let's go live on Mars yeah um it'll be a long time since until there's a golf course on Mars I'm just saying so probably some other things before they get to your golf course but uh but you know and you watch all the discoveries that are going on now and NASA and ESEM plants we haven't found one like Earth yet so it's a pretty good planet we want to use space to make sure we monitor it and protect it and do everything else and stuff as we go out and explore and I think that that will drive everyone to understand that this has to be multinational as we go forward Sarah, do you want to it's just it's the same echo the risk of not collaborating and not working together found far outweighs any nationalistic approach when it comes to space you lose a lot if you don't collaborate you incur additional unnecessary costs if you don't collaborate so would it make any sense for any country they don't want to collaborate to build another navigation system when you've got already three that exist around Earth that are very it requires a lot of satellites for example to have a navigation network doesn't make any sense same thing with communications and so on it just doesn't make an economic sense to do it alone yeah I'm very much built on the point Sarah made earlier which is around awareness actually and when people understand the societal dependence that we have on space already that is a very very powerful you know convener for cooperation I mean this I don't know if anyone else was lucky enough to see the preview of the David Attenborough film earlier in the week where he had these really dramatic images of ice sheets collapsing you know it was very very emotive actually and I think it was just last month that NASA released the you know 25 year data sets on the ice sheets you know it's such a critical input into our understanding of climate change and the oceans I've really enjoyed this week participating in those discussions about oceans discussions about how we are going to protect our water resources and I think as that message gets out as that awareness increases and you know through our program in particular working with developing countries we're very often working with those governments you know providing data on you know sea surface heights wave heights storm surges in sea surface temperatures and with that evidence base then you can start putting in place adequate coastal defenses for instance so you know we really are across the world all dependent on these technologies so I think that awareness piece is very important even if we go down to actually exploration exploration is not driven by government sitting on a desk and agreeing to it exploration is driven by scientist curiosity yeah and they drive a lot of the international collaboration where prior to it becoming a national objective the scientists have already done their job created the necessary collaborations know who they will work on know who's going to develop the instrument prior to a mission being formulated and it's those relationships that are actually that actually outweigh in exploration at least they're probably less likely to be nationalist for example science is a collaborative effort that has always been that way we have time for one or two more questions and then we'll come back to the panel and finish up up in the front here we have a question a comment something a contribution hi I'm Anjara Jackson I'm a physician from the United States two questions one is you mentioned that there are about 900 upstarts in this arena what exactly is their business and then my other comment a question is even with the best of intentions and cooperation once you colonize have commercial enterprises conflicts going to develop so who's going to what will be the laws of the land and who's going to enforce that yeah great I'll start with the 900 company yeah okay go ahead 900 what are they doing they're across the board so there's many that are doing small satellites you know from you know remote sensing and from imaging such as planet labs if you're familiar with them there's other companies doing radar sands other companies do atmospheric sensing and different things like that even some small weather that are trying to miniaturize you know the there's a lot of a big boom area sixty some percent of that market sits in the terrestrial but data management and processing and all that getting really unique because once you bring that together and put that in the cloud then we can apply AI and other machine kind of learning techniques to really better our understanding of many disparate systems in those areas so even for spacecrafts development in general no one entity develops everything that that is in the spacecraft so there's a lot of companies that are actually subcontracts are part of it that would specialize for example on the processing capabilities on board a satellite so that's a company by itself that that that develops just that form of application so even prior to launch even prior to the entire device you have a lot of players just going into building one spacecraft regardless of what entity is is doing the overall system so that could come back that to build on that that's very true for instance in for for Lockheed Martin space sixty cents of the whole of about a dollar of the whole program goes into our supply chain as a matter of fact sitting here we're processing right now a satellite for Arab side the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia it's down at French Guiana getting ready to go on an area on launch one of the major elements was built by McDonald Debt while they're out of Canada and if you follow the chain I will guarantee you there's at least 15 countries that we acquired pieces for so space is already pretty collaborative pretty multi-nation however you want to define that just in countries is pretty normal it's just if you want to develop any space system you'd at least go through a handful of countries the second question was about how do how do how to deal with conflict what's the who has jurisdiction how are these conflicts resolved before we get to that I just want to follow up on this question about the 800 companies we haven't spent a lot of time talking about the blue origins and the SpaceX and the Virgin Galactic and the private space operators who are have been focused at least initially on space tourism and launching satellites and and what their impact has been on the speed and the and opportunities in the you know in this field and Sarah you may have a sense of that given given kind of where you sit so first off just to take a background a lot of these companies are supported by by the government especially on the first side not not a lot of people declare that but a lot of these companies would not exist without government funding one primarily to alleviate the risk that is to get into there just having the the comfort of having a guaranteed contract once once you're once you develop whatever it is be it a launch vehicle or otherwise does alleviate a lot of the risk in starting those businesses and regardless of their overall goal whatever those companies are they are developing them with commercial eye and a commercial eye when it comes to that so we will still see government play when it comes to funding for space but at the same time we will see more and more entrance from the private sector in areas where the risk has been alleviated and there has been an economy created out of it yeah Alice do you think that the these entrants have accelerated the opportunities or yeah absolutely but I think Sarah's observation is really spot on as well that actually about the role of government I mean you know to put it very simplistically you can think you know there's there's the effort that needs to go into the early R&D then when you've got you know your idea you're accelerated then there's the effort that needs to go into really commercializing that product and then there's an effort around the you know gaining access to a new market opportunity and I very much see the government intervention at both ends of that scale so where it is you know blue skies high risk cutting edge technology I think it is largely the preserve of governments to support that activity where you're trying to commercialize something that you've already developed I think there we look to the private sector and we need to you know support the awareness of the benefits of space to enable that commercialization to happen successfully and then again at the end I think government has a role in in in regulating whether there's a new market opportunities making sure there's a level playing field making sure it's enabling yeah so the second question if I'm characterizing it properly was around conflict and conflict being inevitable if you assume that how what's how is it resolved yeah gosh I knew that I'd be a rich and you figure this out I knew that I suppose I can only reflect back on the earlier answer I think I think we will see you know mining for exploration purposes in space and I think where we can coalesce around a common goal you know that common goal being furthering the knowledge of mankind then we should be able to find frameworks for cooperation I think where there's an activity which is purely around commercial gain economic gain it will always be more difficult so I I certainly hope that we build upon the very strong international corporations we have already to make sure that we're really focused on that furthering the knowledge of mankind just to add on that I think the discussion currently is premature because we have a lot of unknowns when it comes to a lot of these businesses so the technological capabilities are still not economically viable to make it a to make a worthy business case out of it and due to these other so many unknowns I think it's very premature to put any regulations or conflict resolution mechanisms in place without us better understanding the the scene that's going to happen in the future it is something that people are currently exploring but it's not something that has still found a value out of okay we've time maybe for one more one more question can you wait for a microphone and you can stand up to everyone hi my name is Nikhil I just wanted to follow up on Sarah's point about making sure that the regulation does not handicap the new entrance to this club and that's because of just one very it may be trivial but an illustration from this conversation where the question around the startups in the US was characterized by you know how are they accelerating innovation and that about you know the unauthorized launch and the launch in India last year being unauthorized when frankly the unauthorized part was between swarm technologies and the US government you know the so I just feel that you know the way in which some of this conversation actually happens the burden of regulation actually comes around much harder on the new entrance and I'm wondering you know what's the way in which the global community can actually have a conversation about what are the rules of you know whatever minimal regulation that's required yeah I think your question is one that we've been kind of trying to grapple down throughout this discussion which is what is what are the forums what are the baselines for actually creating a level playing field as Sarah noted not just among among nations and and the various players how would you all how would you all kind of summarize kind of where you where you see the best solution to this I'll start by just I don't know if I had the best solution but I'd say look we're talking about a new space age for a new space age you exist we need a dynamic marketplace with many companies all through a very robust supply chain interacting so we need to bring people in with that said it has to be sustainable their existing processes and are not that difficult to go get approval if you're gonna fly whatever so people know about it because of that traffic pattern problem I think there's NASA probably has it I haven't checked that particular issue or someone to give the government agency can put that in a website or something but these are established until more more robust processes come online let's say downstream but the US government's policy that I know has been and always and through NASA and NASA administrators they want to sponsor and they want to engender a very robust commercial sector to propagate to the future now there's gonna have to be some rules of the road so we don't harm each other as we go through that would be how I'd start with that so even on an international venue there is an international venue convened by the UN and I can't remember its exact name the United Nations Office for Outer Space Exploration or the Peaceful Use for Outer Space excuse me for not knowing the exact name but it's based out of the UN headquarters in Vienna sorry the UN office is out of Vienna and they do convene with major space players so current space players are members and then there are other actors can become observers off that and that's where a lot of the perhaps agreements that a lot of the nations basically are there and the right people within the nations that are that are to set regulations are also sitting on the table and this is something that has benefited the UAE being an an observed so since we started we were an observer status and then transition to becoming members of it but that has benefited us for having a seat for dialogue and more and more nations that are that want to become players in this in the space field could utilize that form for them Alice? Yeah Sarah is absolutely right you know it's the UN copies that's that grouping that is the legal cornerstone if you like of all our regulatory activities I mean and it has many many strengths you know not least inclusivity where it struggles I think is the issue we were talking about before about keeping pace with you know innovation and because of the nature of that construct as well you know the the challenge is all always around finding the lowest common denominator the lowest area where everyone can agree and because of that sometimes the thresholds are quite low yeah so that's the gap that we need to fill and I think again we shouldn't underestimate the contribution of the private sector to do that we've heard already that the the multinational nature of supply change the integration of the industry globally already and I think we really need to tap into that it's why I'm very I'm very pleased that we're having this discussion through the World Economic Forum as well because I see that as a really you know adding a huge amount of value in being able to get that industry voice heard so you all so we're we're just about out of time but each of you has some milestones ahead and I wanted just in closing sort of recap so that people can focus on those Alice maybe we'll start with you you talked about launches out of the UK yeah in the coming decade what's the what's the time frame we should be looking for yeah absolutely so we've stated ambition is the early 2020s okay early 2020s you know that's within five years sounds sounds roughly that would be early 2020s come on that's okay it's close it's close I also I would say you know the second ambition as well is really to make sure that you know through our spending processes over the next couple of years as well we can also really embed the the huge range of applications that there are for our space service as well I mean and that's incidentally why a second initiative we've taken through WEF actually is to generate a a prize you know an x prize type construct where we will be looking for those latest novel solutions for using space technology for sustainable development goals I hope that that's something that we see an increasing trend over the coming years yeah and Sarah so you have your Mars probe which is scheduled for launch next year have you have you thought beyond that yes so the WE does have quite so we've launched our first home developed spacecraft ended last year yeah 2020 is the mark for us launching our spacecraft to Mars in July to arrive on Mars to arrive to Mars orbit in first quarter of 2021 the WE has also from from perspective of an overall collaborative international efforts has also sort of put its hat in the ring saying that that we're we're going to be part of the over exploration mission by launching a long arching Mars destination Mars that that is moving forward again our Earth observation program is continuing there's also a program for putting an astronaut on the international space station and destination Mars means the station Mars is about the same endeavor that everybody's looking into colonizing Mars but more importantly we're focusing on areas that are important for us in the WE just because of our environment so we're looking at if we're if we're going to send astronauts to colonize Mars and live there they'll need to have a sustainable source of water and food and for us in the UAE water is is quite scarce and food is very hard to grow we're going to have to wrap up Rick Orion you have a scheduled non man launch end of the year but we're in a fast low we have three commercial launches during the year we're going to get the second GPS three up in May June timeframe do Orion and it is a robust that having business right now I do want to mention Mitsubishi though I see some of the audience here we talk a lot about a lot of these other launch systems we've been doing but don't forget Mitsubishi has now their H3 vehicle they're launching which will help the whole system you know bring launch costs down have access to space great okay we're going to wrap it up here a lot of these questions we're getting at early which is probably a good sign before their scuffles on the lunar surface over the peaks of eternal light and other things and thank you for this great discussion to to sort of tee up these discussions that obviously you're going to need to intensify in the in the coming years so Alice Sarah and Rick thank you thanks for having us thank you