What You Missed On The Vector Episode 17: “Designing Space for Sustainability and Scale”

Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn delves into the complex and ever-relevant topic of space sustainability, joined by Dr. Peter Martinez, Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation. With decades of experience spanning multilateral space diplomacy, regulation, and capacity building, Dr. Martinez provides a comprehensive look at what sustainability means in the global space domain and how stakeholders can contribute to a more secure and sustainable future.

Key Highlights:

Understanding Space Sustainability:

• Not Just Environmental: Dr. Martinez explains that space sustainability is not about preserving space itself but ensuring that humanity can sustain space activities indefinitely. It encompasses:
  • Preventing debris proliferation.
  • Ensuring operational safety and resilience.
  • Maintaining financial sustainability.
• A Multifaceted Challenge: Space sustainability intersects with technical, operational, governance, diplomatic, and financial aspects, requiring a coordinated, multi-stakeholder approach.

Defining a Framework for Sustainability:

• Historical Parallels: Dr. Martinez draws a comparison between the evolution of space sustainability and the environmental sustainability movement on Earth. Both began with concerns over degradation—space debris for space, and pollution for Earth.
• The “Three Cs” of Challenges:
  • Congestion: The rapid proliferation of satellites.
  • Contamination: The growing issue of space debris.
  • Contestation: Increased activity by both state and non-state actors.

Capacity Building and Implementation Gaps:

• Importance of Capacity Building:
  • Emerging space nations must develop responsible practices that align with the lessons learned from decades of space activity.
  • Secure World Foundation supports capacity building through resources like the Handbook for New Space Actors and partnerships with organizations like the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs.
• The “Implementation Gap”:
  • Existing best practices and guidelines are plentiful but often lack widespread adoption and enforcement.
  • Dr. Martinez stresses the need to focus on turning voluntary standards into actionable policies.

Balancing Innovation and Regulation:

• Avoiding Over-Regulation: Regulations should focus on performance outcomes rather than prescriptive measures to avoid stifling innovation, particularly for smaller or emerging space businesses.
• Role of the Private Sector:
  • Companies can lead in developing best practices and standards, which governments can later codify into regulations.
  • Industry-led initiatives, like CONFERS (Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations), are already setting the stage for norms in areas like on-orbit servicing.

Key Policy and Governance Recommendations:

1. Strengthening Existing Frameworks:
   • Universalize the Outer Space Treaty and related agreements like the Registration and Liability Conventions.
   • Enhance regulatory capacity to authorize and supervise space activities effectively.
2. Addressing Emerging Issues:
   • Study the environmental impacts of satellite reentry and increased launch rates to avoid unforeseen consequences for Earth’s atmosphere.
   • Develop clearer “rules of the road” for satellite maneuvers and contingency planning.
   • Establish cybersecurity standards to safeguard space systems.
3. Leveraging International Fora:
   • Use multilateral platforms like the UN to facilitate cooperation, dialogue, and the socialization of responsible norms.

Role of Investment in Sustainability:

• Responsible Investment: Dr. Martinez emphasizes the need for investors to understand the fragile nature of the space domain. Poorly conceived investments could not only fail financially but also harm the broader space environment and ecosystem.
• Opportunities for Growth: While the challenges are significant, they also present opportunities for innovation in areas like debris mitigation and on-orbit servicing.

This episode highlights the complexities of space sustainability and the shared responsibility of governments, industry, and civil society in addressing its challenges. By fostering capacity building, promoting standards, and balancing regulation with innovation, stakeholders can ensure a safe and thriving space ecosystem.

Final Thought: Space sustainability is not just a technical or regulatory challenge; it’s a global imperative that requires a holistic and collaborative approach. As Dr. Martinez aptly states, “No single actor can do this alone. International cooperation is absolutely necessary.”

 

Episode Transcript

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights shaping the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and today we will be discussing a topic that is not only increasing in its dominance within conversations about space, but also is growing in its relevance due to its many implications and applications within the space domain. And what I’m talking about is space sustainability. And I can think of no better person to join me in this discussion than my guest, Dr. Peter Martinez, who is the executive director of the Secure World Foundation. His experience spans multilateral space diplomacy, space policy and regulation and capacity building in space science and technology. Previously, he has chaired working groups of the UN committee on the peaceful uses of outer space and served as the chairman of the South African Council for Space Affairs. Additionally, over his career, Peter has authored or co-authored over 200 publications on a wide variety of space research topics. So Peter, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Hey, Katie, great pleasure to join you today. Thanks so much for the invitation to appear on the vector and greetings to your online audience today. I’m delighted to be here and looking forward to our conversation.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

No, and I really am too, because as I mentioned in the opening, I mean the concept around space sustainability means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and really your background and career has set you up to be able to dissect and engage this topic with clarity and especially within the multi-facets of space sustainability. And so I’m really excited for you to be able to give some more context to our listeners. And just as a starting point, I think people may have heard of Secure World Foundation but maybe don’t necessarily know all that you engage with. So could you sort of set the stage with what you do at Secure World?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Sure, thanks for asking. So Secure World Foundation is the original and still the premier civil society organization that focuses on space sustainability. We were founded by the philanthropists Cinder Collins Arsenal, who is our board president, and this year we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary as we all know. And as you mentioned in your introduction, the space Arena is experiencing a period of rapid development and unprecedented growth with space systems providing countless daily benefits to citizens all around the globe and supporting sustainable development, economic prosperity, and human and environmental security on earth. And at the same time, this rapid growth also raises a number of sustainability and governance challenges and concerns and addressing these challenges and concerns is the focus of Secure World Foundation. So we are a private operating foundation dedicated to ensuring that all of humanity can continue to use outer space for peaceful purposes and socioeconomic benefit over the long term.

We have offices in Broomfield, Colorado where I’m situated right now and in Washington dc. But in terms of our activities, we have a very large international footprint. We work with governments, with industry, international organizations and civil society organizations to develop and promote ideas and actions that achieve the secure, sustainable and peaceful uses of artery space. To this end, we promote and support the development of international norms, laws, and policies to foster responsible behavior. We’ve also promoted the development of standards, which I will refer to a bit later on in our discussion. I should also mention that we have permanent observer status in the United Nations and we’re very active in various un foreign dealing with space issues that touch on the broad topic of space sustainability.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

So you all are really in the mix of all of it, which is fascinating because you touch all of the different areas where sustainability might bleed into and how I loved how you framed it because when we talk about space, we’re not just talking about the use of space anymore, we’re also talking about the influx of global players, new emerging markets and new capabilities and really the implications of these actions to the various stakeholders. And so I’m curious, where do you start? So when you start to think about how to define and create a framework of thinking around sustainability, how do you begin to have this conversation, especially as it applies to domestic and global audiences, but also the national security domain, the civil space domain and commercial space?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

That’s a great question and I really like the way you framed your question in terms of a framework of thinking around sustainability. We actually need such a framework because the term space sustainability means different things to D people, right? So I’ll begin by noting that the term space sustainability is actually a misnomer because what we’re actually referring to is not the sustainability of space itself, but rather our ability to sustain space activities indefinitely into the future. And we use the term space sustainability loosely in English, but I don’t think it translates all that clearly in other languages. And so just putting that out there. So to some space, sustainability is about preserving the space environment from debris proliferation to others. It’s more about the safety and resilience of space operations and to others, yet it’s about financial sustainability of space activity. But it actually is about all of these things and more also, the different constituencies may have different priorities.

And this raises a challenge of how we reconcile those different priorities. And there’s an interesting parallel that I’ve noticed between the genesis and evolution of our understanding of space sustainability on earth and the genesis and evolution of our understanding of space sustainability or the concept of sustainable development on earth and space sustainability. So the concept of sustainable development on earth as we now understand, it had its genesis in the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which arose out of concerns over environmental degradation due to pollution and overpopulation. And it gradually gave rise to a much broader concept of sustainable development that is now encapsulated in the 17 sustainable development goals or SDGs that were adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Now, in a similar manner, what we now broadly understand to encompass space, sustainability began with a concern over the degradation of the earth’s space environment through the proliferation of orbital debris.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Deeper reflection has revealed that space debris is actually symptomatic of a broader set of issues that we now collectively refer to as space sustainability. So space sustainability is now understood to be a multifaceted challenge that touches on the technical operational governance, diplomatic security, finance, insurance, and other aspects of space activities. And so therefore, we need to have a multifaceted approach that addresses all of these dimensions, which means that we need to have a coordinated multi-stakeholder approach to space sustainability that harnesses all of the capabilities, experience and competencies in governments, in industry, academia, and civil society. There are three top challenges to space sustainability, what we can call the three Cs. Basically space is becoming increasingly congested with active satellites

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Increasingly

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Contaminated with space debris and increasingly congested by both state and non-state actors alike. And there are a variety of policy regulatory and technical approaches to dealing with these challenges. So for example, when it comes to the challenge of congestion, we have a lot of work being done on space situational awareness, space, traffic management on the technical side, and then on the policy side looking at norms of responsible behavior, rules of the road and so on. As far as of the environment with oral debris, again, it’s looking at space situational awareness and the role that that plays, but also space debris mitigation measures such as post mission disposal and active debris removal. And then finally, with regard to contestation, there’s been a lot of work in the international forum around the development of norms of responsible behavior in space and what are called transparency and confidence building measures. But I want to end my remark on this by saying that space is space governance rather is polycentric, meaning that there are different centers and layers of governance that all have to work together. And this polycentric nature of space governance means that no single actor or space power or corporation, no matter how capable they are, can do all of this alone. International cooperation is absolutely necessary to addressing these space sustainability challenges effectively.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and I want to continue to pull this thread about the polycentric approach of it because you completely hit the nail on the head when you talk about space, especially the domain and the environment that we’re in. Now, you do get nuanced very quickly, but you do need to broaden it to understand the different stakeholders, their different mission sets, their capabilities, their objectives, and they might not run on the same timelines or even with the same standards like you mentioned. And so when you’re dealing in this kind of environment with new technologies, capabilities and stakeholders, where do you start to get buy-in? Because I think the other side of the coin, when you talk about space sustainability really comes around capacity building and it can be capacity building for a locality for a country, but even amongst these different players. And so what would you say about a starting point to get buy-in to get everyone sort of rowing their objectives in the same direction?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Yeah. Well, I would say that buy-in ultimately comes from the self-interest of all peaceful space actors who basically want to carry out their operations in a safe, sustainable, and predictable space domain. And commercial actors have a vested interest in protecting and preserving the domain because ultimately the financial viability and sustainability of commercial space ventures depends upon having access to a safe and stable operating domain. And that brings us to the whole carrot and stick aspect of buy-in, right? How you encourage that and finding the appropriate balance between the two as you mentioned. So the carrot can be in the form of incentives for investment in sustainability linked research or the development of products and services that support sustainability while meeting real business needs. So for example, things like on orbit servicing and on orbit refueling. And I think we will ultimately also see the insurance industry stepping up to be part of the carrot side of the equation.

On the stick side, there’s the role that regulation can play in promoting space sustainability. And this can take the form of measures such as a mandatory post mission disposal, for example. So as you mentioned in your introduction, in a previous role, I was a national regulator, and at that time when we issued a launch license for a satellite, we always had as part of the license due diligence process questions about the end of life disposal plan. And invariably for small satellites, the answer we would get from the applicant would be, oh, well it’ll reenter within 25 years because everybody is kind of following that. So-called 25 year rule, and as a regulator I was not able to impose a stricter licensing condition because that would’ve been overly onerous on the licensee. But with the advent of commercially developed post mission disposal technologies that supports a DR, I think it will now become possible for regulators to write into the license conditions a requirement that a licensee will dispose of their satellite at the end of mission within a certain amount of time, either through an inherent capability and built into the design of the satellite itself or procuring such a service from a commercial service provider.

But on this topic of regulation, let me also say that space sustainability is not something that you can regulate into place. Regulation certainly has a role to play, but it’s not the solution only part of it. And we also need to be mindful of when is the right time to regulate some things. So given that we are in such a dynamic and exploratory phase with so many new kinds of space activities where in many instances we don’t yet really know what the best practices are, my view is that we should avoid overly restrictive or prescriptive regulations because we don’t want to stifle innovation.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I’m so glad you said that last point because I think that’s a big question mark and maybe concern for some of the smaller businesses coming up because while space does have these rules of engagement, I’m talking about commercial space, but these rules of engagement and ways that LEO MEO Geo has been interacted with in the past, there is this new emergence of opportunities, but you also don’t want businesses to start building something that might be viable in seven years. That regulation is going to render obsolete. And so there is this need to allow the ingenuity of the private sector to develop as it needs to, but also keep a close watch on how it’s going to affect the rest of the domain.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

So, you touched on another very important point, Kelli, which was you mentioned capacity building. And I’d like to say a few words about that if I may please. Because when I was chairing the process in the UN to develop the long-term sustainability guidelines, as you know in that forum, we have a very wide diversity of space actors with various levels of technical and regulatory expertise. And one of the concerns of the emerging space notions was that these guidelines was essentially raise the barriers to entry for new space actors. And so it was very, very important that we build a capacity building into this. And if you read those 21 guidelines, you will see that capacity building is an information exchange, is a kind of golden thread running through many of those guidelines. And so point I wanted to make is that not only is capacity building very important, but it’s also the responsibility of both the experienced as well as emerging space actors.

It’s in nobody’s interest for an emerging space notion to learn the lessons of the first 50 years of the space, right? So emerging actors should appreciate that they’re entering a crowded domain and also a fragile and strategic domain, and they should perform due diligence and display due regard for the other users of that domain and that they should take advantage of the numerous capacity building opportunities available to them. But by the same token, the more experienced actors should share their best practices and lessons learned to promote the safe and responsible behavior of space. And I’m delighted to say that there are actually a number of excellent resources and programs in place to support such capacity building. I’d like to put in a plug for some of the work we do at Secure World. We have supported a number of emerging space nations to think through the sorts of issues they need to consider when developing their national space activities so that they do so in a sustainable manner that does not cause harm to the space environment or safety considerations for other actors.

And in this regard, we have our handbook for New Space actors, which is a resource that is available in English, Spanish, French, and Chinese. But I also want to call out the resources available from the United Nations office for Outer Space Affairs. They have a number of excellent online resources, including an online course on space sustainability that people can do, and they offer a number of webinars on the topic as well. So I would strongly encourage folks to have a look at those resources, particularly if they are in a developing or emerging space nation context and want to think about how they should develop their program in a way that supports space sustainability.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, no, that’s wonderful. And we’ll make sure to link to those in the chat on the LinkedIn so folks can access that. I want to stay on this topic that you framed about new space and emerging space. So classics space, fairing nations, and then these emerging space fairing nations that are coming out and the responsibility that each of those have and the onus on developing sustainable measures, which you mentioned before, which I actually really like that framing that if people are going to engage in space, it is on them to make sure that their practices and their activities actually lead with the sustainable mindset. And when we think about the new way that the future is emerging and there has to be gaps that have to be addressed. And so I want to pull in some of the themes that were coming up on LinkedIn with this broader question. So there’s lots of questions about who should pay for space debris and how should satellites, deorbit, and I’m curious your thoughts around who should lead and who should follow. So when should governments take the lead and when should commercial follow or vice versa? Because this eventuality that we’re building into has both of these aspects engaging in the same space. So what do you think about that?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Well, I think the private sector can play a strong role in or lead in the development of best practices, standards, that kind of thing. And governments can then build on that and socialize those through international forum like the, through the development of regulations and so on. But there’s a series of gaps. And so perhaps what I’d like to do is to talk about what we see as some of the biggest gaps, and then perhaps from there you can see where the places where industry can take a lead or government can take a lead. And I would say that one of the biggest gaps we actually have is what I call the implementation gap. We have lots of voluntary best practices, guidelines, commitments, standards, many of which are industry led, and this is fantastic, but we really need to start focusing more on the implementation. We don’t necessarily need more initiatives to develop new guidelines or best practices for space sustainability, but rather to overlap more fully the ones that we do have. And government needs to not create technology specific requirements, but rather to focus on meeting performance outcomes. And industry, I think, can play a strong role in sharing their experience with the implementation and operations and also to update their practices as necessary. Some of the things that industry advocates as best practices can later be codified into regulation. And we’ve seen this, for example, with the development of standards for close proximity operations and on orbit servicing through an industry led consortium called Confers.

There’s also often a gap or really a lag in translating technical research findings and best practices into policy and regulation. And I think this is just a simple consequence of industry moving at a much faster pace than the capacity of national regulators or the international forum like cos to keep up. And so the main challenge to regulators is how to future-proof legislation so that it isn’t overcome by technological or market developments. I mentioned earlier on that we’ve seen some excellent work in standard development. I think we need more standards and this is an area where industry can lead, for example, and standards help with interoperability. They also help to promote the development of industry by providing more options for customers and by lowering the migration costs for users. And a great example of an industry led initiative is confers, which as I mentioned is a consortium that is focusing on standards and best practices for round of wound close proximity operations for on orbit servicing. This consortium has developed a set of principles that were subsequently submitted to subcommittee 14 of ISO as the basis for a new international standard on this topic. And the codification of such standards can help to create the foundation for eventual regulations or international guidelines.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That concept of standards is one that I keep here. It keeps coming up in every conversation, especially at the most recent space symposium, just the need to kind of all be on the same sheet of music as we’re trying to engage, especially in low earth orbit with all these capabilities coming online. Because to your point, you don’t want to stifle innovation, but you want to make sure that people are doing it in a way that’s going to be able to be integrated into other system architecture, but also allow them to have this runway of success. And I do have a follow-up question on your implementation gap from someone from the audience, but if you had to give a roadmap or a framework of what successful implementation could look like in five to 10 years, what would that look like?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Yeah, well, I think that the first step would be the universalization of the existing international treaty framework. Now of course, that framework was developed in the sixties and seventies, so it doesn’t respond to all the current challenges that we have, but it does provide a very strong basis for international cooperation and for sets the foundation for responsible conduct of space activities in outer space. It may come as a surprise to some of the audience that as much as the outer space Treaty has been ratified, it has still not been ratified by all the countries that are launching satellites. And so I would say that really as a minimum, we would like to see all countries that are active in space, at least having ratified the Outer Space Treaty, preferably some of the other treaties that followed as well. But as a minimum, the Outer Space Treaty.

The other two that I think that are very important to ratify and implement are the registration and the liability convention. In terms of implementation, it’s an interesting one. Many of the countries that have ratified the Registration and liability Convention did so decades ago when they were not space fairing nations. And the liability was really on the few space fairing nations of the time, which would’ve been I guess the two superpowers, the US and the former Soviet Union and a few other countries. And so there is an obligation on countries to authorize and supervise the activities of their national actors. And most of the countries when they ratified those instruments did not have a domestic space industry, whereas many are starting to have one now. And I think that one of the challenges of implementation is that countries need to build up their regulatory capacity. In other words, their capacity for the authorization and supervision of space activities.

And we spoke earlier on about capacity building and I can say as a former national regulator that this is a challenge. Even 10 years ago when I was doing this work, the due diligence to authorize a mission, it’s months and months of work. And then you talk about the ongoing supervision piece. I think this is something that has been overlooked by many national regulators. License has been issued, and then the ongoing, not much attention has been paid to the ongoing supervision piece, but as the space domain gets more and more congested, it’ll be very, very important for national regulators to ramp up their supervision capability. Now, in terms of other implementation aspects, as I mentioned, we have a lot of best practice guidelines, standards, general assembly resolutions and so on. And these contain excellent guidance based on best practice by leading space nations and leading space actors.

And it would be great to see wider implementation of these voluntary instruments. And I just want to end on with one remark on that. Non-binding does not mean non-legal in the sense that states, that’s a good point. Choose to implement these non-binding instruments in their domestic regulatory frameworks, thus giving them legal character within those jurisdictions. And indeed, many notions have done so for example, the IADC and COPA space debris mitigation guidelines, aspects of those guidelines have been implemented in the national regulatory frameworks of many notions. So to close off on your question, I think that we need to do a better job of implementing the international frameworks and the voluntary frameworks that are in place.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

One relevant follow-up question from the audience around that international framework, but they ask if you think there’s a need for a stronger space authority, so some kind of international organization to ensure things like space debris laws are followed.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Well, I think this brings us back to the polycentric nature of space governance.

I don’t think there is an appetite in the international system to establish some kind of supernational organization that’s going to govern all space activities. I think what is much more likely to happen is that we will build on the existing international treaty framework and these international best practice instruments standards and guidelines and really use the existing multinational fora like you UN cos to work through these issues and then to encourage the member states to implement them in a way that everybody is pulling in the same direction. That’s how I think things will evolve in the future. I don’t see a future anytime soon where we will have some kind of international space authority.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it’s a bit too premature at this point to see what that future is going to look like and how all the different actors are going to engage when we think about policy. And you mentioned a lot of strengthening existing policies, expanding. Are there any policy changes that you would advocate for would allow and support a more sustainable future?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Sure. I can think of several things that we would advocate for that fall into I guess three broad categories. So in the first category of policy interventions if you like, I think we need to start by recognizing that space sustainability is part of the broader sustainability conversation and it’s intertwined with sustainable development on earth. This more holistic approach needs to take into consideration the environmental impacts of space activities on earth as well. The greatly increased launch rates and the commensurately increased rate in number of satellite reentries raise valid concerns about the potential impact of all these space activities on the earth and the atmosphere. There’ve been a number of studies showing that the chemical products of rocket exhaust plumes can accelerate processes, atmospheric processes such as ozone depletion, for example.

And we’re only just starting to explore the impact of satellite reentries on the atmosphere. For a long time, people have acknowledged that these effects might exist, but the level of activity was insignificant to really worry about them. But this may no longer be true if we’re talking about hundreds of rocket launches and thousands of spacecraft reentries per year in the future. So in this sense, I think we are with this issue where we were with the space debris issue in the early 1980s where we recognized that yeah, there was possibly some environmental concerns there, but at that point it wasn’t critical enough to really worry about. So we need more research to allow us to develop data-driven policies for space sustainability because it would really be ironic if we enacted policies to protect the LEO environment only to discovery years later that those policies have a detrimental effect on the earth itself. The second category that I would refer to would be to strengthen our ability to deal with contingency situations in space. And there are several things we can do there. The first is that we can improve data transparency and data exchange practices, which is essential for things like collision risk mitigation.

SSA products are the products of different inputs, different algorithms, and many space operators keep those confidential or proprietary. They keep those confidential for proprietary or national security reasons. And we need to build greater transparency and trust for SSA data exchange, not only among states but also among companies. And for example, the risk tolerance thresholds of different actors vary, which in turns impacts the planning and implementation of risk mitigation strategies and maneuvers. And this list, this lack of standardization can present coordination challenges for operators facing a contingency situation in space. So we need more dialogue and mutual understanding of things like risk tolerance thresholds, including are there calculated and the practical implications of any differences across the various operators. Secondly, I would say we need to improve our various inter operator communication channels. And this can be something as simple as having contact information so that you can reach another operator quickly and efficiently.

Also, in other domains like maritime aviation, we have guard channels or common frequencies that operators can use to contact each other. So for example, in civil aviation, the VHA frequency of 1 21 0.5 megahertz is used exclusively for emergency communications. There is currently no such arrangement for space. The third thing under this general category would be to establish clear rules of the road for coordinating maneuvers among active satellites such that there are mutually agreed procedures in place before a crisis emerges. And so that even if you cannot reach another operator, each operator knows which way they have to turn, so to say, to avoid a collision. And lastly, I would say space systems need to be safeguarded from cybersecurity risks and acts of sabotage. I think we still, I mean there is a growing awareness of cyber risks, certainly among the larger government and commercial operators, but I’m not so sure that this has gone down to the levels of the smaller and emerging space actors.

And I think we really need to raise awareness of the importance of enacting cybersecurity standards and best practices. The third category that I would refer to in terms of policy changes is I think we need to strengthen and use existing multilateral forums to facilitate international coordination and cooperation. As I said earlier, space sustainability as an intrinsically multilateral issue. And multilateral bodies like the UN have an important role to play in convening all of the relevant stakeholders in facilitating dialogue, in supporting coordination and cooperation. And they also have an important role to play in socializing norms of responsible behavior. And as I mentioned before, the existing legal framework in space activities has served as well, but it was developed decades before the rapid commercialization of space activities and these new kinds of space activities have raised questions that were not really addressed when those frameworks were developed. So the international forum are the right place to address these questions being raised by these new types of space activities piece.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and a lot of the themes that you brought up, and that was a very thorough list, thank you for sharing. That was about, you talked about coordination, standards, norms, risk mitigation, and you did mention trust, which is kind of this pervasive thread that runs amongst it because we need to have a trusting environment of the actions and the actors that are going to be engaging in this domain. And my final question to you is about a stakeholder class that I didn’t necessarily hear mentioned, but I think is a critical component of this, and it’s the investment class. So when you actually look about the emergence of these markets and there’s a growing interest in investing in space, but there’s also a responsibility of these investors in these markets for sustainability, what are your thoughts on their engagement and how they can do this thoughtfully as well?

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Yeah. Oh, that’s a fantastic question. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, so we’ve seen a surge in interest in investments in the space sector a few years ago with the whole SPAC wave of SPACs.

Some of those didn’t turn out too well, but am confident that we will see a resurgence of interest in the investment community and space. And this is great. We want to grow the space community, but this has to be done in a way that is responsible and sustainable. And one of the things that does worry me is that space investment is attracting lots of investors who are new to the space domain who do not understand that they’re entering a fragile and strategic domain, and that the consequences of their investment decisions extend far, far beyond their immediate investors. And that if a space project goes wrong, let’s say you have a large constellation that is half deployed in space and the company goes belly up, that can have long lasting implications, unpredictable, long lasting implications that far outweigh the financial loss to those investors in the project. And we do need to make the investment community aware of these challenges of investing sustainably in the space sector so that they can invest in a responsible way that grows the sector. Because at the end of the day, if we have Ill-conceived investments that go wrong, it will not only result in a financial loss to those involved in those enterprises, but also potentially a wider loss to the entire space community in the sense of loss of confidence in the space sector in general, and a reduction in overall space investment.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I appreciate you sharing that perspective because I don’t often hear that angle come in when people talk about space investment because they talk about it from the business opportunity and the growth capacity, but not the outcome and the impact. And I liked how you said that there’s a fragility to the ecosystem that we’re dealing with, which I think is an important topic to enter the domain and the collective conversation as people think about what this growth looks like and not just from how it can benefit them, but also what it’s going to do to the global ecosystem at large.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Absolutely. And I’ll just add that we’ve talked about the concerns raised by all these increasing activities in space, but it also presents fantastic business opportunities. I mean, I think there’s going to be, it’s going to spur the development of all sorts of technologies and services and markets that support space sustainability. So I’m positive that we will see a growth of many businesses and services that ultimately support space sustainability while helping to grow the space economy writ large.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I agree. I’m seeing that a lot too in the entrepreneurial communities about how can this be addressed, especially around the debris mitigation aspect. It’s a really critical one that I think is on the forefront of a lot of young entrepreneurs minds, and I really want to thank you, Peter, for joining us today. This was such a fascinating conversation, and I know we probably just scratched the surface of what you and your team does on a daily basis, but I think it was a good framework and really good context. So when people do start thinking about sustainability, they have a bit more clarity to engage with.

Dr. Peter Martinez:

Thank you. It was a great pleasure. Really enjoyed our conversation.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, thank you. And to all of the tuners, thank you for listening in. I want you to remember that there’s a place for everyone in the global space ecosystem and stay tuned for Future Vector episodes. Have a great day.

 

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