What You Missed On The Vector Episode 18: “Commercial Innovations in Space Sustainability”

Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this insightful episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn dives into the critical topic of space sustainability, focusing on commercial approaches to building a sustainable space infrastructure. Joining her is Chris Blackerby, Chief Operating Officer of AstroScale Holdings, who shares his expertise on addressing space debris and fostering a sustainable orbital environment.

Key Highlights:

The Nature of the Problem:

• Increasing Reliance on Space: Blackerby emphasizes the growing dependence on satellite-driven services, from weather forecasting to climate monitoring, self-driving cars, and the Internet of Things. However, this reliance is at risk due to increasing congestion and debris in Earth’s orbit.
• Crowded Orbits: With the exponential growth of satellite launches, including mega-constellations like Starlink, and the rise of human spaceflight activities, the space environment is becoming riskier for all stakeholders.

AstroScale’s Role in Space Sustainability:

• Mission and Core Services: AstroScale aims to “increase value and decrease risk” in orbit. The company focuses on debris removal, life extension for satellites, end-of-life services, and space situational awareness.
• Pioneering Technology: Blackerby discusses the technical challenges of approaching, identifying, and capturing non-communicative objects in space, an area where AstroScale is leading with groundbreaking missions like ELSA-D and Address J.

Framing Space Sustainability:

• A Multifaceted Approach: Sustainability isn’t just environmental. Blackerby highlights its economic, political, and societal dimensions, from ensuring a safe orbital environment for commercial operations to maintaining critical satellite services for global security and climate monitoring.
• Overcoming Perceptions: The term “sustainability” often carries environmental connotations, but in the space sector, it encompasses creating a stable economic and operational environment for future growth.

Who Should Lead?

• Governments as Pioneers: Blackerby argues that governments must take the lead in funding and regulating space debris removal, as they were historically responsible for creating much of the debris. He likens this to government-funded breakthroughs in aviation, the internet, and GPS, which later became commercially viable.
• Private Sector’s Role: Commercial operators must integrate sustainability into their business models from the start, ensuring their satellites are serviceable and prepared for end-of-life management.

Cooperation vs. Competition:

• Industry Collaboration: Blackerby stresses the importance of cooperation among industry players, highlighting CONFERS (Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations), a global industry group developing standards and best practices for satellite servicing.
• A Unified Ecosystem: With over 80 companies now involved in satellite servicing, Blackerby emphasizes the need for collective action to promote a sustainable orbital environment.

Future Outlook:

• Scaling Operations: AstroScale is transitioning from demonstrating individual capabilities to deploying scalable satellite servicing operations, which will be critical as the number of satellites in orbit grows from 10,000 to an estimated 30,000–40,000 in the next decade.
• Enabling the Trillion-Dollar Space Economy: Blackerby asserts that the trillion-dollar space economy won’t be realized without robust satellite servicing capabilities, from debris removal to in-orbit refueling and repair.

This episode provides a comprehensive look at the challenges and opportunities in space sustainability, highlighting the need for collaboration among governments, commercial operators, and industry groups. Blackerby’s insights emphasize the critical role of satellite servicing in enabling a safe and thriving orbital environment, paving the way for the future space economy.

Final Note: Sustainability is not just about solving today’s problems—it’s about creating a foundation for innovation, exploration, and economic growth in space. As Blackerby aptly puts it, “We’re all in this together,” and the momentum must not slow.

 

Episode Transcript

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights driving the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and today’s episode is part two of a conversation around space sustainability. Last episode, we spoke with Dr. Peter Martinez from Secure World Foundation and he imparted his thoughts on structure and guidelines around sustainability, so think frameworks of thinking and the players and considerations for innovation and regulation. Today we are going to focus on commercial approaches to sustainability and how we can create an infrastructure to not only decrease risk, but also increase value and usage in space. Joining me for this discussion is Chris Blacker be who joined Astro Scale Holdings as the chief operating officer in August, 2017 and leads global strategic development for the company. Chris has extensive experience in the space industry spanning both the US government and commercial as well as domestic and international.

Chris served as the NASA attaché to Asia, which is the senior space policy official in the US Embassy of Tokyo before joining Astro Scale. And in that capacity he identified opportunities for cooperation in the region and acted as an official intermediary between NASA and its partners in Asia in negotiating agreements and resolving disputes. And he also participated in numerous outreach events highlighting NASA’s activities. Other notable at NASA roles include executive director of the NASA Advisory Council, which provides advice to senior national officials on future policies and plans, and he was also a presidential management fellow. Chris, thank you so much for joining me.

Chris Blackerby:

Kelli. Thanks so much for having me. Great to see you.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

You too. And I am so excited for this conversation because you and I have talked about this before and really this idea of sustainability seems to be the topic du jour for a lot of people in the ecosystem because it’s a small word that means a lot of things to a lot of people. And from your perspective and what’s interesting about scale being this company at the forefront, your tagline in many ways is building the future of Stace but sustainably. And so if you wouldn’t mind starting off this conversation with really talking about astro scale, its priorities, what its business is focused on, and what are your core services?

Chris Blackerby:

Great, thank you. And you actually outlined it really well in your introduction. We’re all about increasing value and decreasing risk. That’s everything that we’re focused on and people see astro scale as a space debris removal company. That’s how we started. Granted, that’s the first thing that the CEO and founder kicked off when he started the company back in 2013, was as a space debris removal company, but we’re not space removal company, which was waste time back then. It was at the time, as you mentioned, I was at the US Embassy working with NASA as the attaché in Tokyo at the time. And when I heard about that idea, I thought it’s fantastic. We need to focus on it, super difficult business case, not sure how it’s going to work. And then that was when the founder, Nobu Ada was starting the company. And since then, I got to know him over the time I was with NASA, and by the time I was finishing my tour at NASA, I was looking for some other opportunities.

And he approached me and came up with this proposition that this issue, which is so difficult to resolve, has to be addressed globally. It couldn’t be addressed just from Japan. It can’t be addressed just from one country or one company. And so the idea is to create this global footprint that can address all of the various aspects related to this. And again, not just on debris removal on all aspects of satellite servicing. That’s what’s going to drive sustainability is the ability to approach objects, to remove the debris, to refuel them, to repurpose them, to recycle them. The possibilities are really extensive when we start discussing that.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah. Well, and you guys do, as you mentioned, a myriad of things. I know you do situational awareness as you mentioned, active debris removal. I know life extension and also end of life, right? So when you think about the evolution and complexity of this topic and specifically around space debris, could you just give the viewers an understanding about the nature of the problem, looking at really the composition, the causation effects. We talk about it a lot in broad strokes with the satellite proliferation equation and the increased engagement and usage in space. But why is this really an issue that needs to be needs holistically engaged with?

Chris Blackerby:

So, starting at the baseline, we are so incredibly reliant on our services from space every day and we’re growing more. So as time goes on, we really need that capability of the data that’s being delivered from orbit. And if we were having this conversation 20 years ago, we probably wouldn’t be as concerned because we weren’t as reliant on data from space at that time. We weren’t starting to get there. But now us and then our future generations are going to be so dependent on what we learn from space, whether it’s getting weather forecasts, getting directions, having conversations like this, access to these capabilities from remote areas of the earth. That’s just the daily stuff. Then there’s things like climate change monitoring, understanding the nature of what the earth is doing, what it looks like, the atmosphere, the oceans rising. All of that is informed by the holistic data that we get from space and going forward.

When we look into self-driving cars, internet of things, it’s just going to be more so we’re incredibly reliant on that capability from space and it’s getting increasingly risky to be up there. So it’s this kind of dual problem, the double, double-edged sword aspect of operations in orbit. And so right now the number of satellites in space is increasing at an incredible rate. And I think everybody obviously in the industry knows this, but even outside the casual observer can see what Starlink has done with the number of launches. You see when you have big heavy lift launch vehicles that have 30 or 40 or in some cases more satellites on there, all of which go up to orbit and then disperse, you see the international space station and the potential of more human space activity. You can see that this environment, this neighborhood and space is getting more crowded and thus more risky to debris accidents.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and to that point about being crowded and risky, it really does permeate every aspect of space engagement because now we’re talking about space exploration, we’re talking about research and development, and then we’re talking about all these business cases of these companies that are already existing in the space domain or want to bring their capabilities online. And it cuts across all of ’em, right? Every domain, every aspect. And so I’m going to ask you a somewhat simple question, but it’s a question that I think people posture all the time is why is removal cleanup so difficult?

Chris Blackerby:

Variety of reasons, Kelli, and it really focuses on the three main pillars of how Astro scale was founded and what we focus on every day. So astro scale is building the technical capabilities to remove space debris, but we’re not just a technology company. So we focus on the technology, we focus on the policy and regulatory aspect, and we focus on the economics of it. And so your question is why is it so difficult? It is amalgamation of all three of those things. So focusing first on the technology, identifying, approaching, rendezvous capture of an object in space that is non-communicative, that isn’t telling you where it is, is incredibly difficult. It’s minimized just by the way, how casually I say it, because it’s not that easy even with that. So doing that is something that really has by a commercial company almost never been done. We know that it happens all the time with communicative objects servicing the Hubble space telescope, sending crew and cargo to the International Space Station.

There is active two-way communication between those objects. So obviously you can see how that would reduce risk. So that is an easier, still very difficult but easier approach. What we’re doing that we’ve done with a couple of missions, one in orbit right now is approaching an object that is not talking to us. We don’t know where it’s when we launch, we can get the ground-based capability, but once we get up there, we’re trying to figure out where it is. And that is difficult in and of itself. And then coming close to it, rendezvous, getting into it, taking pictures is extremely difficult. So that’s just the technical side. I can pause there and then get into the other two difficulties, but starting on technical hard.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and the technicality of it too is that there’s different sizes, right? There’s large debris. There’s small debris. And so you’re dealing with, like you said, an amalgamation. I am going to touch on the other two difficulties, but I’m going to frame it differently. So I asked this question similar to Peter about really how do you define and create a framework of thinking? So when you think about sustainability, how should it be framed? Is it environmental, is it economic? Is it political? I’m willing to bet that it needs to be framed different ways for different people, and I’m really curious if there’s a disconnect between how we frame the issue and how we solve it.

Chris Blackerby:

Such a good question. And it’s not to be tried to have it always, but it is all of them. And so it’s a mix of everything. And I saw Peter just yesterday, I’ll see him again today at a conference out here. So this is a topic that is discussed among the community all the time. You’re right that we do have to frame it in different ways for different audiences. And I think in a way what you’re maybe referring to here is that the environmental side sometimes takes over the conversation. I don’t mean that in a bad way so much, but just in that it gets maybe painted with the brush of tree hugging environmentalists without really thinking about the economic aspect of it.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, because that word sustainability is really overly used in that environmental market. And so they assume that it’s a one for one comparison.

Chris Blackerby:

It’s almost, it’s a loaded word in that sense. And so when you say it immediately, it’s a trigger word to a lot of people, sometimes good, sometimes bad, that says that means something and people immediately associate it with a certain thing, whether it’s a good or bad association. But if we step back from that concept of sustainability, it’s so all encompassing. So we’re talking about a sustainable environment for operations of businesses. So where people are making revenue and providing a service, they want to be able to have an environment under which they can do that, that’s sustainability and that connects to the economic viability of any ecosystem. So the ecosystem that we’re talking about now is orbit, but it connects to ecosystems on the ground. And so if you want to provide a service using some kind of resource, you need it to be sustainable.

So there’s an economic aspect, but also the companies are not the only ones using orbits. Obviously governments are using orbits, and so they’re providing services to citizens for the security, the safety, the health of the people on earth. And so the sustainability also connects to the health of communities, the health of the world to geopolitics. So it’s a political issue, it’s an economic issue. So to just say, and then it’s a financial issue. It’s a financial issue to have a sustainable company for us providing the service for people who rely on the downstream benefits of satellite data. So the word sustainability on its own is difficult in a way. It has this immediate connotation, but it stretches across so many aspects

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And the different aspects affect the other because I don’t want to say it’s tiered, but it’s intertwined and it’s interconnected. And I’m curious then from your perspective, who should lead and who should follow? And I’m assuming that this is a question that is going to be dependent on where we are within the timescale and the evolution, but is it commercial operators, is it national legislation, is it international standards, and then beyond the leading and following, another piece of that is really informing because to your point, different voices inform in a different way. You have academia, you have the economists, you have people that are preaching safety or is it political?

Chris Blackerby:

Your question and the varying points, it takes me as it’s going through my mind is why this is such a fun job. It’s so interesting. It touches on so many. Yeah, completely. And so there’s so many things to think about with what you just said. Let’s start with the leading the orbital environment is global commons. It’s famously talked about in that way nobody owns it. And so regulation is difficult and solving a problem like space debris is extremely challenging in an environment like that. It’s challenging even in an environment where there is an understood authority like a local park or someone where there’s an authority that can take steps to make something happen in an orbital environment, it’s so difficult. And so who has to lead from the front is going to be governance. They’re going to have to help to fund the removal. So that’s the removal of debris, which governments in the past have been the ones who created.

So it makes sense that they would take responsibility to pay for its removal, but it’s not just the removal of debris. That’s actually a bit of a’s a benefit, but it’s almost a side benefit. What they’re really doing is funding the development of an industry. And just like with any deep tech related industry throughout history, governments are the initial funders, aircraft, the internet, GPS, all of those things start from government funding. There wasn’t a commercial demand for airplanes in 1910, so that was governments that was funding the development of it. And then once the development happens and the technology becomes safer and more repeatable and more advanced, then of course there becomes a commercial market for something. And that’s where we stand at the front edge now. So the removal of debris, which we’re focused on, which different countries and organizations around the world and Japan and Europe and the UK are already taking steps to address is good for the sustainability environment.

It’s even better for the ecosystem of on orbit servicing and the long-term sustainability because it helps to develop the capabilities that we astro scale and dozens of other companies now around the world are focused on. Once that happens, once we see that there’s a realistic capability for companies to provide this service, the market’s going to follow. Commercial companies early on are understandably hesitant to jump in at a low level tech. Once we start to prove it with government help, then they’re going to see that that’s going to fall. So that’s where I see the lead and follow side on the messaging. It’s a bit of a joint responsibility and overall it’s a joint responsibility. I’ve made this point frequently, recently that the pressure is on all of us. The pressure is on US astro scale and the commercial community to continue to prove out the technical capabilities the pressure is on the governments to, and the pressure is on the commercial industry to prepare themselves for the future. They can’t be thinking about sustainability five or 10 years from now when we have 10 or 15 or 20 more objects in orbit. They need to bake that into the production of what they’re doing now so that it can be easier to do in the future

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

As a business case. And I really like how you laid out governments taking the lead commercial really enlivening the environment. And you’re right, we see this across every industry. And I think what’s interesting, if you take that projection trajectory one step further, its always government involvement tend toward commercialization. And then they come up with these own markets in and of themselves. So you can think the cell phone industry followed this. And how often now do you use your cell phone for calling? It’s all the accessories and the apps and the other things that you do. And so, this service will enable the infrastructure and space to be usable in so many different ways once it is more clean and de-risked in a way because all of these other companies, I imagine are building their capabilities to take advantage of assist lunar Leo landscape, but they need to make sure that their assets are safe and protected. And so I could see even you getting eyes, I know the government’s paying for it, but I’m sure investors are paying attention and smaller capabilities that are going to be ready in five to seven years are paying attention. And they’re almost betting on this being a reality.

Chris Blackerby:

Definitely we’ve been able to raise enough money to grow a team around the world of over 600 people. We are extremely optimistic about the long-term benefits of satellite servicing. The baseline, which you kind of referred to, there is a technology, and I touched on it earlier in the conversation, but this capability to do RPO rendezvous and proximity operations, that’s the baseline. That’s where everything starts. And from there, if we can prove out a reliable economical capability for rendezvous proximity operations, which includes docking with an object, the aperture opens up so much, the potential opens up so much. And everyone talks Kelli about this trillion 2 trillion whatever, trillion-dollar space economy, the number goes up every time there’s a reassessment from markets. It’s not going to happen without a satellite servicing capability.

Chris Blackerby:

It’s not going to happen. So the focus on commercial crew or commercial space destinations, the focus on these number of constellations growing, the incredible high utilization of orbit that a vast economic potential of the space, both LEO and sis lunar ecosystem, it’s not going to happen if we can’t develop the servicing capability. We meaning the global space community.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

So how do you think we’re going to get there? Because you’re absolutely right. I mean this is one of the most critical components to solve because it’s really going to enable this collective future that all of us are really pushing toward to together. But in your opinion, what gaps still remain to be filled for sustainable infrastructure and for space debris mitigation models really to be wholly effective?

Chris Blackerby:

We’re taking the first steps up the mountain right now. This is early, so the answer to your question a lot, but at least we’re taking the first steps, at least we’re not sitting in our chairs and just looking at the mountain saying, wow, that’s big. We’ll never get up there. We’re actually taking the first steps to achieve what we need to achieve. And so the first steps are well knowledge. Let’s start there. And that touches on an earlier question. You had awareness 10 years ago, 11 years ago when astro scale started. As we referenced earlier, no one thought that this was going to be a commercial capability. We were alone in doing that 11 years ago. When I joined the company seven years ago, very few competitors out there, very few people thought that really we had a shot to grow as big as we did.

Now here we are in 2024, we count close to a hundred different companies around the world who are doing something similar to this. So investment is coming in, interest from governments and investors and companies is happening. It’s not beginning. It is real. And so that’s the first step is this awareness of the issue and awareness that hey, something can be done about this that doesn’t involve high budget, long-term government missions. It can involve the commercial sector just in the way that other aspects of space have gone over to commercial, this is happening as well. So that’s the first step is awareness. Okay, we’re basically there. We’re check, we’re aware next step proving out the technology. And that’s something that we are starting to do. You may see we have a mission in space now called Address J, which is approaching to a three ton upper stage JSA Japan Space Agency Rocket Body. If you haven’t seen the images, there’s a bunch we’ve put online. Humbly speaking, they’re pretty cool.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I saw them. It’s like surveys, the body of debris, right?

Chris Blackerby:

And we’ve been able to get up and hold a fixed position to this object and take some frankly pretty stunning pictures of it, fairly unprecedented capability to move that close and to get that much of an image of a noncooperative, non-communicative object in space. There’s the first step we’re going to see, just like any technology, we start developing it. We’re going to continue on this incrementally in our offices around the world, I’m sure other companies will as well. And then each of these steps is going to start moving forward. Now, all of that said, your question was about where are the gaps or where do we need to focus on? It’s expensive to do this. This is a highly capital intensive industry that we’re in. And so funding is essential, whether it’s from investors or from companies, customers who want to pay for our service, as we talked about earlier. We need to continue to see that responsibility from the governments to continue to help take us farther.

We need to continue to see that responsibility from commercial sectors to prepare for future removal for future servicing of their satellites. So we’re all in this together. Commercial providers, operators, governments, you all of us, to spread the word. We’re all in this together to make this happen. If any of us takes our hand off the throttle now, it’s going to slow down and it’s going to impact all of the development. So we’ve kind of all got to run in together and continue to make this happen. And so far we see it happening. We can’t slow down.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Given that as you mentioned, the environment and to your point, it’s a very good thing that there are people not only paying attention, but there’s lots of new companies and capabilities doing something about it. So it really is one of those, I would say market verticals within space that has a lot of interest and a lot of really smart minds trying to tackle this. When you see this environment building out, is it purely competitive or is there room for company consolidation or coordination of capabilities amongst the players that are trying to solve this much larger problem?

Chris Blackerby:

It cannot be competitive to a significant degree at this point, or we’re going to destroy each other. We’re too early stage to start shooting within ourselves because we’re still so new. And I’ll do the shameless plug step here for confers, which I know Kelli you’re well aware of. You helped us with a confers conference last year in DC and did a fantastic job leading the discussion there. Confers is a global industry group of satellite servicing operators, satellite servicing companies who are providing either a service or a capability around that to develop the standards and best practices that are going to lead us to this sustainable ecosystem. Confer started in 2018 as a project under DARPA in the US DOD because DARPA saw that this was starting to pick up steam, this idea of servicing. And they said, we need some standards around this. We need to hear from the commercial sector about what it’s going to take to get us to this level of an ecosystem.

At that time, five companies joined five globally. Now over 86 years later, over 80 companies now are members of Confers who are all working together as an industry group to drive forward this sector. And it’s more than just developing standards now. IT is talking about the sector as a whole and how this is going work globally. Confer is no longer under the umbrella of darpa. A couple of years ago, we transitioned to be a wholly independent industry group based in the us but with a global membership. And I should have said at the start, I was president of confers for three years. So I’m a little bit biased, but as I told the members all the time, the success of an industry group like Confers is wholly connected to the success of all of your companies and vice versa. So this is the answer to your question. We have to be cooperative. We have to have that megaphone that a group like Confers provides to say, Hey, we’re a bunch of primarily smaller startup level companies, but there is a business here and we need to start working together on it and promoting it. So that’s an example of how all of these companies that are out there are walking in the same way toward this sustainable orbital environment.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and that’s why I actually asked the question is because of my confer’s experience, and I learned so much during that conference because for me, I have engaged with IAM portfolio or sustainability in very segmented nuanced ways, but really hearing it from the holistic view. And one thing that struck me that was really, I think discussed more and more in a lot of the topics beyond the standards and norms, it was also being able to go from demo to scale. And so to your point about this industry being somewhat in its infancy and being really capital intensive, you need to be able to also ride on the successes of your demos and get it to scale so that the commercial opportunities can expand.

Chris Blackerby:

Totally true. And to go back to my mountain climbing analogy, we’re climbing up this mountain of trying to get to a commercial on servicing capability. That’s routine is where we want to get to the top. But if you ever do hiking, when you hike, you hit these false peaks. Sometimes you walk up and you see a beautiful view and you’re like, ah, what a wonderful view. We did it, but there’s a lot more to go up this path or a hot path. So we hit these peaks and right now, for example, with our address J Mission, whoa, look what we did. We were able to get close to an object in orbit and take great pictures. Oh wait, there’s a bunch of other stuff up there. So we’re not unaware of the fact that we need to continue to really address a lot of these issues.

And a big one, huge one to address is this idea of scale of how do we get from celebrating the success of one demo to being able to have multiple servicing satellites in orbit at the same time doing a variety of things from removal to refueling, to repairing, to moving orbits, to taking pictures. And how do we do that? We astro scale and then we as a community do that with multiple fat satellites in orbit. How do we build them out? That’s the big next question. It’s something that we talk about all the time internally

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And scale really does allow more of those creative business use cases. And you mentioned how your job is so fun because you engage with all different aspects of this problem. And what I think is so fun about the space ecosystem now is that we’re really moving to this moment where we’re having very real conversations about assist lunar economy and what that could look like. And so it’s really not the things of science fiction anymore. It will very quickly soon become science fact. And a big component of that is the economics. And so when you think about the economics of on orbit servicing and sort of the whole IAM portfolio, what really are there and when do you think we will start to see an environment or a reality where it’s more operational,

Chris Blackerby:

We hope to see it by the end of this decade, by 2030, we hope to see that satellite servicing in all its forms is routine, is something that we don’t have to put out big press releases because we approached an object to a certain degree. We can. It’s just going to be normal. It’s just going to be normal. It’s just going to be normal. And that’s again the case with so many different industries in the nascent sector and then moving toward operational utilization. So we’re hoping that by that time and by that time, let’s think, let’s look five to 10 years into the future and think about where we could be right now, there are roughly 10,000 active satellites in low earth orbit. I’m thinking five to 10 years. Projections are, it’s in the thirties to 40,000 if not more.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

There’s already 20,000 plus that have licenses to be launched.

Chris Blackerby:

And there’s just going to be so many more Kelli, and I think those numbers we’re talking here are on the conservative side, so that many more in space. So all of that providing the services on the ground, because really we talk about space in this way of space is so far out there and it’s something that we don’t really connect to. And there’s a question of why are we spending money in space? There’s never been a single dollar that was spent in space. All of that money is spent on the ground and for the most part people on the ground. And so we’re going to be benefiting more and more from all of that orbital economy that impacts our terrestrial health and economy. So five to 10 years from now, you’ve got let’s say 30 to 40,000 satellites offering earth observation, communications capability, a whole host of other things that are going to service terrestrial five to 10 years from now.

I don’t know. We can talk about this, how many commercial LEO destinations might be in orbit five to 10 years from now? And that is a term that’s used for basically commercial space stations. The ISS in that next five to 10 year timeframe is likely going to be retired. There’s been a lot of news about the de orbit of the ISS over the next few years. So likely in that five to 10 year timeframe it will be retired. There will be two, three commercial LEO destinations just based out of the us never mind other countries in the world. Part of this, if we take the S lunar by that point, are we going to have an operating station of some sort ins lunar orbit with likely boots on the moon, potential base on the moon? We’ll see. And all of this is happening quickly. Now. There are a lot of companies that are governments that are focused on this. So as we look forward to that expansive environment, which we only scratch the surface of in the last two minutes, all of that needs servicing. Just like a neighborhood that gets set up on earth is going to need servicing,

It’s going to need trucks and buses and gas stations and everything else that supports an ecosystem that’s all going to be needed up there. And so working backwards, how do we then support what’s coming? And so it’s so exciting to think about that whole science fiction to science fact because we’re not looking at picture books from the fifties and sixties about, Ooh, this is what it could be. It’s happening. It’s happening now.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and I think you’ll be happy to know that whenever people ask me about what I’m the most excited about when it comes to the space domain, and I always tell them that seeing the IAM portfolio really come to life and start to be integrated and adaptive and expanded in a way is really where I’m betting my money on. So, if I was Bing Chris, I would invest too, but I’m not there yet.

Chris Blackerby:

We’ll waiting. We’ll stand by. Kelli, you may contact information anytime

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

We’ll get there. My last question for you, it’s kind of a funny one, but I am curious, and it’s based on how you framed moving from a press release and something that is really exciting to people to becoming something routine. And that is what the industry wishes for because you want this mundane iteration of these maneuvers to just be things that happen as an industry insider. What are the one or two things that would happen that you would get really excited about because it’s going to move the needle, but some of us might miss?

Chris Blackerby:

So, the obvious one connected specifically to what we’re doing is the demonstration of a capture of a docking. So we’ve done that with an object that we brought to orbit in our first mission called Elsa D. But on this current mission, again, we’re only taking pictures. What is going to be transformative is when we can show that we grab onto, grab onto that object.

That’s going to be key. This one, it’s not one that people might miss because I think it would be so groundbreaking in any way, but getting the first commercial station on orbit with a human on that vehicle, it’s going to be incredible. And it won’t be transformative immediately. But knowing that there’s a person in space on a commercial vehicle and that that’s possible and that is going to happen, that is going to be, it’s going to turn the public’s attention toward the orbital environment in a way that a satellite can’t. And just like the lunar landing did 50 years ago or more, having that connection is going to be really important. And then suddenly people aren’t saying, well, it’s just a satellite that could get hit. There’s a person there. And we think that with the ISS, but the commercial aspect of that is going to be huge. And I guess another big one is Starship is SpaceX. When that can become operational with the capacity that has, that’s going to alter the space ecosystem in ways that we still aren’t, I think wholly sure of with the amount that it can fit on there and the different capabilities, it’s going to have ripple effects on a whole bunch of different aspects connected to developing space capabilities.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, I agree with all of those. And particularly on your last two points, the human on the commercial space, commercial station or commercial rocket makes it a lot more personal. Like you said, it’s not just a hunk of metal in the sky, it’s flesh and blood and it connects you in a different way. And Starship, when we talk about opportunity and access, I mean the opportunity and access to your point that is going to ripple across all these industries and capabilities and uses that we don’t even know is really exciting. Because I always joke sometimes, and especially you look at Space Symposium and we don’t know who are going to be the major exhibitors in 10 to 15 years. I mean, it’s going to be a lot of the companies we know our corporate members, but there’s a lot of other entities that are really going to change the landscape of what space is going to look like and how it’s used and engaged with.

Chris Blackerby:

I went to Space Symposium with Astro Scale for the first time in 2018. We had a tiny little booth with three or four of us there, graphics. Our graphics weren’t great. It was very, very low level. And everybody would come by and be like, huh, Astro scale, what do you guys do? We were there again this year, Kelli, and had a big booth in the main area. Oh, I remember lots of people around. I bumped into you often there. And no one is asking us now Astro Scale. Huh? What do you guys do? So that was 2018. April. Right now we’re April, 2024. So six years, six years from, who are you to, well, obviously Astro Scale is here, so give us 2030. To your point, we don’t know. We don’t know who’s out there that’s going to be changing the face of the industry at that point. So it’s incredibly exciting to be a part of.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and it’s an amazing story too, because it shows not only the vision of what could be achieved, but also the tenacity to do it in a time when people are questioning the business model. So you and your company have a lot to be proud of.

Chris Blackerby:

Thank you, appreciate that. But to call back to another point, it’s on all of us and we can’t slow down. We’re not taking any victory lapse at all. It’s full speed ahead. And I hope that the rest of the community, all of the constituencies who are involved in this feel the same way. We’ve got to keep moving forward or we’re not going to get there.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I think they do, and particularly because as I mentioned in the beginning, sustainability is a topic that you can’t avoid when you talk or engage with various ideas of space. And so I really want to thank you for your time today. I mean, this was such a fun and fascinating conversation and there’s probably 30 other questions I could ask you, but maybe we’ll have to do a part three.

Chris Blackerby:

I’m down anytime, Kelli, you let me know. It’s always fun to talk about this and thank you for your time and great guidance on the conversation.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Thank you, Chris.

Chris Blackerby:

Thanks.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And for everyone watching, remember there’s a place for everyone in the global space ecosystem. Please stay tuned for future vector conversations. Thanks.

 

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Commercial Innovations in Space Sustainability

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