Features

Back in the 70’s, the Japanese space agency JAXA run an experiment called the Japanese Cat's Whisker Experiment. It took place aboard Skylab between May 1973 and February 1974, the same year Pink Floyd released “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Contrary to what you might think, it did not involve cats.

The United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) recently hosted closed meetings of the Legal Subcommittee’s Working Group on Space Resource Activity at its headquarters in Vienna. The Working Group has just completed the first year of its five-year mandate to review the regulation of such activity, including possible “additional international governance instruments”. Although it had planned to meet only during the Legal Subcommittee’s annual two-week session earlier this year, the Working Group failed at that time to agree on even a preliminary statement.

Space Exploration is an ever growing field full of excitement and challenges never faced before by the human race. In the past with Artemis, Space-X, Mars exploration, solar-robot exploration, the James Webb telescope we have had a great legacy in space exploration. However, it is time for the younger generation to continue developing these innovations and projects.

We are just halfway through 2023 and I have accumulated enough miles in the Space conference business that I feel I can sit down and put down some ideas, or notes at least, on what we at SpaceWatch.Global have seen and learned through the lens of the media in the past weeks and months. We have visited six countries, met thousands of people, and saw some new trends. But are these trends destined to ever be solved? Or are they just buzzwords echoed over and over again?

Like last year, the SpaceWatch.Global newsroom has gathered together to analyse  the Financial Time Investing In Space 2023 Summit, held in London on the 5th and 6th of June 2023. The second Summit kept the format of the inaugural one, with a mixed audience of venture capitalists, space experts, space industrials, and agency representatives. We observed a few leitmotifs seen during the first edition, like the importance every year some speaker gives to find a better name for the Space industry

On the 5th and 6th of June 2023, the Financial Time’s held its second Investing In Space conference. Similarly to last year, it was held in a hybrid form. The first day online, the second day live from London. Titled “Balancing Optimism with Realism”, the two-day summit hosted a selection of investors, innovators, government, and end-users for analyses of the opportunities of space.

In Portugal, the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC) is seeking new ways to apply scientific action to support solutions both in space and on Earth.

The Global Space Conference on Climate Change (GLOC 2023) arrived in Oslo last month; it was uncharacteristically interesting for a space conference. Not because it was overflowing with greatness, but because the bar for innovation and programmatic depth with space conferences has always tended to be quite low so the experience was unexpected.

The climate crisis keeps me up most nights. It occupies my thoughts persistently, and induces profound concern with climate-related matters, leading to intense emotional distress, sadness, and anger. I oscillate between feelings of hopelessness and experience a diminished interest and enjoyment in activities unrelated to climate and animal rights advocacy. I have to actively manage panic and anxiety attacks, depressive episodes, and there have been instances where I have felt physically ill due to the lack of action from global leaders.

On May 23-25 2023, we attended (online) GLOC2023: The Global Space Conference on Climate Change 2023, organized under the patronage of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and its member the Norwegian Space Agency (NOSA).