Arab News Japan

TOKYO: A forum titled “The Future of Space” was held in Tokyo on Wednesday, bringing together key international figures from industry, academia, and government to discuss the future of space utilization, the challenges of ensuring sustainable space use, the solutions to overcome them and the cross-national collaboration that is necessary to achieve such goals.

One of the panel discussions tackled the issue of space debris and how to make space safer and cleaner for future missions.

Dan Ceperley, CEO and co-founder of LeoLabs, a company that is trying to make space more sustainable, said he was enthused by the space program of the United Arab Emirates and its plan to help clear space debris.

“I am very excited to see actual hardware go into space and actual missions take flight, so I got quite excited by those missions,” he told Arab News. “I think that clearing out space debris is an extremely important issue, and right now it is going to take a lot of investment because we are just getting over the technological hurdles, proving out the technology. The technology is there; it just needs to be proven over and over and turned into a commercial service.”

Ceperley says the finances of space are changing and will impact how the business develops: “There is a huge change in the finances of space going on so that when you talk about space debris and collision avoidance, we are shifting from the viewpoint of protecting one satellite to protecting an entire company. That is where space insurance is likely to undergo a major change. So, it’s a coupling of the finance, the financial side of space insurance with the technical side.” 

The forum noted the challenges in space “such as space debris, planetary environmental damage, and limited resources for digital communication.” The forum’s publicity stated: “As we explore new frontiers on the moon and embark on the development of the next-generation space station, it would be necessary to take into account the safety of the people involved, protection of the environment and reuse of resources.”

“The Future of Space 2023” aimed to address those issues, including sessions on “Charting a Course for Sustainable Space Development,” “Ensuring Digital Connectivity in the Cosmos” and “How Innovation is Tackling the Space Debris Problem.”

Speakers and panelists included US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel; Philip McAlister, NASA’s Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Division for Space Operations; astronaut YAMAZAKI Naoko; and YAMAKAWA Hiroshi, President of JAXA, Japan’s space agency.