SWF Staff Discuss Law, Policy and Economics of Orbital Debris at the 2020 CODER Workshop

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

SWF co-sponsored the Fall 2020 CODER Virtual Workshop, organized by the University of Maryland (UMD) Center for Orbital Debris Education and Research (CODER). The 3-day event brought together experts from around the world to talk about the technical, law, policy, and economics aspects of orbital debris, space situational awareness (SSA), and space traffic management (STM).

The first day opened with a half-day workshop on the economics of orbital debris, organized in partnership with the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute and the Space Economy Evolution (SEE) Lab at the SDA Bocconi School of Management, that discussed economic theory as applied to orbital debris, incentives for reducing the risk of orbital debris, and whether or not orbital debris was a pressing economic problem. The afternoon featured technical paper sessions on orbital debris mitigation and remediation.

The second day of the workshop opened with a keynote from Mark Mulholland, Lead for STM/SSA Policy and Strategy for the Office of Space Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The keynote was followed by a policy and law paper session moderated by SWF Director of Program Planning Dr. Brian Weeden. The afternoon featured three technical paper sessions on SSA.

The third day of the workshop opened with a technical paper session on STM that was followed by a closing pane discussion on policy recommendations for the incoming Biden administration on orbital debris, SSA, and STM, which was also moderated by Dr. Weeden. The panel included experts from the Aerospace Corporation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Satellite Industry Association.

More information can be found on the CODER 2020 website at UMD. Recordings of the sessions and the presentations will be available in the near future.