 5. Initiating these dialogues for space sustainability, it is more important now than ever. 4. Countries setting a good example through adopting best principles and best practices. 3. With soft power comes really strong leadership. 2. In the space community, we're aware of how fragile the space environment is. 1. Hello, I'm Crystal Hazelton, Director of the Space Application Programs at the Secure World Foundation. As the conference chair for this year's Summit for Space Sustainability, I am so pleased to have more than 650 registered participants. Welcome. I know there are many competing demands for your time and attention, and I'm incredibly pleased that you've decided to join us today. We've got a lot of great content packed into the next few days. The Secure World Foundation launched this conference two years ago with the intention of being the premier forum for discussing issues around space sustainability. The only one focused on all aspects and areas of the topic, and with an eye toward solutions, problem solving, and the future. Given ongoing events around the world, we considered cancelling this year's event and waiting until we can all meet in person. But much like I stated at the beginning of the last Summit for Space Sustainability, space activity has not stopped. Rockets are still launching. Governments are still supporting science missions in human explorations and writing regulations. Industry is still working to improve services to its customers. So here we are to talk about emerging trends, to explore unique international and national perspectives, and to examine aspects of issues that honestly don't get enough attention. Before we go any farther, I would be remiss not to extend a warm thank you to our sponsors. Our digital content sponsors are here today, virtually of course, to demonstrate their commitment to improving space sustainability. They are a diverse group of organizations that showcase just how important this topic is to the entire space community, and we are deeply grateful for their support. So thank you to our returning sponsors, Astroscale, ESA, ULA, Space Logistics, the Space and Sustainability Initiative at CYU Boulder. And also welcome and thanks to our new sponsors, BHO Legal, Leo Labs, Clifford Chance, KPMG, and ComSpok. We are also excited to highlight some great digital content from them. So please check out our website, swfsummit.org for more information. We also have a really generous set of media sponsors, GVF, Sat News, SpaceWatch Global, and Space News. I encourage all of you to engage with and subscribe to the great sources of information available from all of our media sponsors. Next, I want to highlight our young professional content from this year. The pandemic has really made networking engagement by young professionals extremely difficult. That's why this year we've added a lot of content providing opportunities for young professionals to engage on space sustainability topics. It's my privilege to announce the winners of our student essay competition. It was with great difficulty that we selected four winners from among the many insightful and well researched responses. Congrats to Renata, Nathaniel, Andrew, and Cervante. Check out their submissions on our website. Thank you to all of you who contributed via your registration fee. That's part of what made this essay competition possible. In addition, I'd like you to check out our next-gen video series highlighting a range of talented young professionals who all work with our sponsor organizations. You can learn about their backgrounds and current work in this engaging content that is also available on the summit website. Finally, we invite anyone who registered as a young professional to attend one of our mentoring sessions that are being offered on Thursday. You should have already received your invitation if you're signed up as a young professional. And if not, check your spam and let us know and we'll get that to you. We're holding two sessions, one at 9 a.m. Eastern and one at 7 Eastern to accommodate as many schedules as possible. We have a really exciting lineup of mentors for you to engage with, so be sure to sign up via that registration email. Next, I have an exciting announcement to make about our summit. Tomorrow, we will not only hear a candid interview from Tori Bruno, president and CEO of the United Launch Alliance. We will also be hearing an additional keynote from Bavia Lull, who serves as a senior advisor to the NASA administrator for budget and finance. She was the senior most White House appointee and acting chief of staff at NASA for the first 100 days of the Biden administration. The agency's transition to administration under Joe Biden. Before that, she served as part of the transition agency review team for both NASA and the Department of Defense. So as you can imagine, this is an exciting opportunity to hear about sustainability from the new administration. That will be tomorrow at 12.15, extending our day just slightly. So if you're planning to sign off, we have extended the agenda to accommodate this keynote by Ms. Lull. And then finally, we have a little bit of housekeeping. We choose to host this as a live event in part to make sure there would be a chance for interaction between our participants and our speakers, limited as we are in this virtual environment. Every panel has time set aside for various audience interventions, including polls and Q&A. All you need to do is click the link located below the live stream feed, or you can go directly to menti.com and enter the code 33235686. You can see it right there on your screen. In fact, you can participate in our very first poll of the day right now. So be sure to check that out.