The Maui Economic Development Board (MEDB) and The Aerospace Corporation led the 8th Annual International SSA Data Providers and Satellite Owner/Operators Workshop on 20 September 2023 in Wailea, Hawaii, USA. This was the latest in a series of invitation-only workshops held in conjunction with the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference. This year’s workshop was a hybrid format. The workshop included government, and non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives from Canada, ESA, EU, France, Germany, Japan, NASA, the United Kingdom, and U.S. government (Department of Commerce, Department of State, the Federal Aviation Administration, and U.S. Space Force).
The workshop was organized into a not-for-attribution main session followed by a roundtable discussion. The workshop’s goal was to provide insights to policymakers on operator perspectives. The main session included a kickoff presentation, a report on a pre-event survey sent to international participants, and a panel discussion. The kickoff address was an update given by Mariel Borowitz, Director of International SSA Engagement, Office of Space Commerce (OSC), National Oceanic and Space Administration, (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). Jordan Denamur-Paul from the Aerospace Corporation presented the pre-event survey findings. The panel provided an opportunity to hear US and European governmental and commercial perspectives on defining SSA basic services.
The key takeaway from the workshop is that coordination and shared understanding will be needed among an emerging system of national and regional, independent federated SSA centers. The ultimate goal is that when the different centers put out collision avoidance (CA) information, differences in conjunction predictions or risk assessments are well understood,