The 12th Annual Symposium in 2008, proclaimed by the United Nations as The International Year of Planet Earth, emphasized the benefits of the space program for society. This time the question was asked ‘How can space address Earth’s global challenges in the 21st century?’. In this context ‘space’ can be interpreted in a wide sense encompassing observations of our home planet and more distant worlds by human and robotic missions as well as the technologies developed in support of these programs.
Participants included members of agencies, industry and academia, plus enthusiasts and students with interests in space activities, in global problems of Earth’s environment, energy and resources, and especially the links among them.
Agnieszka Lukaszczyk, SGAC Executive Officer and Bijal (Bee) Thakore, Regional Coordinator for Asia-Pacific at SGAC both participated and presented the youth perspective on Space derived solutions at the 12th Annual Symposium of the International Space University on 'Space Solutions for Earth's Global Challenges' held from 20-22 Feb 2008. Agnieszka's talk on 'How aware are we?' featured the knowledge of young people on how space technology can address the global issue of food security. Bee's talk closed off the symposium's policy and legal session providing the audience with the world space youth's visions of the next 50 years on how space can help us derive solutions in line with the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. You can find both talks for download here as well as the presentation of Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Schrogl, the Director of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), which hosts the SGAC main office in Vienna:
http://www.espi.or.at/images/stories/dokumente/presentations/2008/isusym...
http://www.spacegeneration.org/files/downloads/ISU_Symposium/ThakoreISU....
http://www.espi.or.at/images/stories/dokumente/presentations/2008/isu%20...
More detailed results of Bee's talk will be featured in a report that will follow up the 2nd part of the 50 years visions project that SGAC initiated in 2007 in order to bring forward the leading ideas that young people want the space leaders of today to address.
We look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions - you can actively participate in the 50 years visions forums and share your ideas.
Receive the lastest announcements, discuss space-related topics with other members.