Bridging Space Innovations Opportunities: Perspectives on Asia-Pacific Experiences

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic shift in the center of gravity in space innovation. Once mainly the province of state-related actors, innovation is now increasingly led by commercial space, often in close connection with civil and military space partners. While this is a process already underway in leading space nations, in the Asia-Pacific, momentum in this direction remains mixed. Space industrial bases vary considerably across the region, and so too do the relationships among civil, military and commercial space sectors. Regulatory and institutional patterns also diverge widely, and in some cases, tend to lag developments in advanced space nations.

Towards fostering a more dynamic space innovation environment in the Asia-Pacific, a dialogue among advanced and emerging Asia-Pacific space nations will be extremely productive, permitting an exchange of perspectives on the current state of space innovation across the region, and more crucially, the different experiences of developing relationships, institutions and regulatory frameworks to facilitate collaborative space innovation across sectors and players. This APRSAF-28 Side Event will be a platform for an initial discussion of these issues, identifying and paving the way for enhanced approaches to space innovation and further regional discussions and potential cooperation.

AGENDA (updated November 9)
All times are Japan time (GMT+9)

Event 1: 15:00-16:00, 16 November 2022, in-person
Networking at APRSAF
Room 101, 1st floor, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) Vietnam National Space Center Building (A6)

Event 2: 17:00-19:30 (JST, UTC+9), 26 November 2022, on-line
Panel Discussion and Breakout Session
Confirmed speakers and SMEs:

Naoko Yamazaki, Astronaut
Dr. Gay Jane Perez, Deputy Director General for Space Science and Technology, Philippine Space Agency
Veronica Cesco, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, Co-Founder/CEO, SpaceBase
Soyoung Chung, Korea Aerospace Research Institute
Adila Abdul Satar, ASEAN Business Lead, Aerospace & Satellite Solutions
Amazon Web Services
Happy Rumiris, LAPAN-BRIN
Aya Iwamoto, Lead, Japan Space Policy, Astoscale
Moderators: Naoko Sugita, Bernadette Joy Detera

The event consists of three elements as follows: a panel discussion, Cosmic Sandbox, and a media contest on the same topic.

Panel discussion

The panel discussion is held on the topic, ‘NewSpace in Asia Pacific Climate Change Actions’, for a duration of 75-90 minutes (maximum) on November 26, 2022.

The panel consists of three experts from different backgrounds such as space law, space policy, and business.
Following are the experts who will be joining the panel:
Narayan Prasad, COO, satsearch.co, and also a renowned space policy expert from India. He has worked with several groups within the space industry and will be speaking from the perspective of NewSpace Policy and Business for the panel.

Devleena Bhattacharjee, Founder, and CEO, Numer8 Analytics, a geo-data science company that analyzes satellite data for helping marine fisherfolk. She will be speaking from the perspective of the NewSpace Business.

David LX Ho, Co-founder, Malaysia Space Initiative, is a space law expert. He has extensively researched space law and policy, especially in the A-Pac region, and will be representing the NewSpace Law and Policy perspective.

Multidisciplinary design thinking workshop

The Cosmic Sandbox, a multidisciplinary design thinking workshop, is held on the challenge theme ‘NewSpace in Asia Pacific Climate Change Actions’, for a duration of 4 hours (maximum) on November 27, 2022.

There will be a briefing session during this workshop, followed by ice-breaking activity and a series of brainstorming sessions. The participants will be provided with a series of brainstorming boards with questions to guide their thought processes and streamline the discussions.

The focus of the brainstorming sessions is to empathize with the different affected communities, compare the empathy chart of different communities and nail down the commonalities, differences, and anomalies. Finally, the last brainstorming session will be about how these translate to business, policy, and technological requirements.

Media contest

The media contest will be open to submissions from November 6 to 27, 2022. The goal of the media contest is to illustrate the unique needs, challenges, and capabilities of a community in Asia Pacific Oceania, in the face of the changing climate.

The submissions can be of any format: poems, digital artworks, paintings, comics, photos, reels, memes, etc. The only limit is the creativity of participants.

Submissions are particularly encouraged from students, and are not limited to APRSAF attendees, nor to professional artists, nor to those with experience of the space field.

NOTE: All three elements of the event will be open for registration together or separately according to the interest of the participants.

This side event will give participants an overview of UNOOSA, and introduce 2 capacity-building activities that are open for all United Nations Member States in the Asia-Pacific region:

• national space law and policy through the Space Law for New Space Actors project
• space technology through the Access to Space for All initiative

Agenda:

• Opening Remarks/Introduction of UNOOSA: Luc St-Pierre (Chief, Space Applications Section, UNOOSA)
• Keynote: Quentin Verspieren (Assistant Professor, Science, Technology and Innovation Governance (STIG) Program, Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo)
• Space Law/Policy Capacity Building: Yukiko Okumura (Legal Liaison Affairs Officer, Committee, Policy, and Legal Affairs Section)
• Space Technology Capacity Building: Hazuki Mori (Expert, Space Applications Section, UNOOSA)
• Q & A
• Closing Remarks

Venue: Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) VNSC Building (A6) Room 903

For more about UNOOSA, please see https://www.unoosa.org/