Space Symposium


Symposium Featured Gen. Shelton and Director of National Intelligence Clapper

Written by: developer

The Space Foundation’s 30th Space Symposium opened its main program on May 20 with featured speaker Gen. William L. Shelton, USAF, Commander, Air Force Space Command, who discussed space situational awareness, the Space Fence program and his concerns about the increasing need to track the hundreds of thousands of objects in space.

Gen. Shelton is responsible for organizing, equipping, training and maintaining mission-ready space and cyberspace forces and capabilities for North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Strategic Command and other combatant commands around the world. He will retire as head of Air Force Space Command in August.

Featured speaker for the last day of the Space Foundation’s 30th Space Symposium was The Honorable James R. Clapper (Lieutenant General, USAF, Ret.), Director of National Intelligence. Clapper discussed growing reliance on commercial space imagery and the importance of lowering the cost of launches through competition.

Prior to becoming the Director of National Intelligence, Clapper served for over three years in two administrations as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, where he served as the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on intelligence, counterintelligence and security matters for the Department. In this capacity, he was also dual-hatted as the Director of Defense Intelligence for DNI.

The 30th Space Symposium brought together top government and space leaders from around the world for four days of discussion, May 19-22, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo. See more about the program at www.spacesymposium.org.

This article is part of Space Watch: June 2014 (Volume: 13, Issue: 6).


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