SpaceWatch.Global Opinion

The first annual conference of the Swiss Space Law Forum, titled “Space Law: Key Principles and Swiss Perspectives”, took place at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law on the campus of University of Lausanne on 4 November 2022.

The Space Hackathon 2.0 was a student challenge organized by Leanspace, a newspace company building the digital infrastructure of the space industry,  during the annual Space Tech Expo Europe, held in Bremen on November the 15th and 16th 2022. 

This is the second part of an op-end article reflecting the EuroDefense network ongoing work from several national chapters with the objective to recommend a common ambitious high-level vision for European advancement in the Space Domain as it proves critical to Europe’s prosperity, security and defence.   Europe should build a space strategic culture that accentuates its strengths, minimizes its weaknesses and articulates and justifies its goals to the world and to itself.

CEO and Publisher Torsten Kriening and Chief Editor Emma Gatti had the chance to interview Dr. Josef Aschbacher, ESA's Director General, the day after the end for the Paris CM-22. Listen up the radio interview, or read the shorter version here below.

Space systems have become critical enablers for a wide variety of applications which are of paramount importance to the functioning of national and regionally/globally integrated economies, as well as the operations of Armed Forces.

The least we can say is that 2022 has been an eventful year on the world stage, and with no doubt, space took a major part in the headlines. From global environmental challenges to the sudden perception of a war fought Europe's backyard, the space domain and its technology have suddenly reached a level of public awareness and public utility never experienced before. What have we learned from the year that has just gone by, and what still needs to be addressed?

Space Technology for Earth Applications (STEA) is a rapidly growing project group of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC). As of today, the group consists of 376 members from 78 countries worldwide. The mission of the group is to provide a platform for space enthusiasts to discuss various topics related to the usage of space-related technology to monitor the Earth such as climate change adaptation, disaster management, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and pollution mapping. This year, two of our most active projects are related to flood assessments through the usage of satellite imagery and social media data.

The entrepreneurial support process in the space sector follows often the same development path starting with the ideation process, going to incubation, and then followed by acceleration and scale-up. While the sequence is clear, each step along this chain of entrepreneurship has its dynamic set of actors as well as key characteristics. For these reasons, there is not a single approach that would apply to all contexts to successfully launch a space business, but one element is clear: the ideation phase is critical because this is where the new concepts emerge.

Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author, known for his artwork in the field of mass surveillance and data collection. His work was exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Barbican in London. In 2018, Trevor turned his interest to Space. He launched the Orbital Reflector, a 1.5 million dollars,

This year the 23rd AMOS (Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies) Conference, held in Hawaii from the 27th to the 30th of September 2022, hosted 1212 in-person attendees at the Wailea Beach Resort and 259 guests virtually. The conference sold-out way in advance. Maybe a sign of a post-Covid desire to travel, or maybe a sign that Hawaii never loses its exotic allure, nevertheless the enthusiastic attendance also reflected a growing interest in space sustainability and space commerce initiatives across all sectors, from national governments to private companies, from non-governmental entities to the science community.