The satellite business is booming – and presenting humans with a new problem: How to clean up Earth’s orbit before man-made objects collide with each other? This discussion brought together analyst Harriett Brettle of Astroscale; Moriba Jah, Associate Professor at the University of Texas; Regina Peldszus of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Daniel Porras, Space Security Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. It was moderated by Torsten Kriening, Publisher of SpaceWatch.Global.
“Whether you realize it or not, we’re here to tell you that space is part of the global infrastructure in our knowledge base – and that’s not going to go away,” explained Jah. Few people realize that much of the data that’s used to monitor climate change come from space-based capabilities, he added.
“We assume that space is special”, observed Harriett Brettle, “that it’s this utopian society where everyone will live on Mars and it’s going to be fantastic. But we’re still going to be the same douchebags on Mars as we are on Earth if we don’t do something different.”