MONTRÉAL, 20 March 2015 – Aviation and space community experts from around the globe wound up the first-ever Aerospace Symposium at ICAO Headquarters in Montréal today, a landmark event jointly organized by ICAO and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).
Hundreds of participants explored a wide range of topics during the event, proposals and viewpoints which will now help State regulators and space travel innovators gain a better understanding of their respective challenges and opportunities in the decades ahead.
“To get to space and back, or even to get to the stratosphere or mesosphere and back, you need to go through the same airspace that airplanes fly in. This means that global civil aviation has an inherent safety concern here which must be recognized,” stressed ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu in his opening address.
“I very much appreciate the innovative technologies and visionary spirit of the men and women who are making all of this work a reality today,” Aliu continued, “and the principles and flexibility of the Chicago Convention should certainly prove helpful as we begin to assist governments and the private sector in determining practical areas of common ground to support their mutual objectives.”
Among the many issues discussed at the ICAO/UNOOSA Symposium was an overview of existing regulations and practices, the safety management approaches and systems engineering methods presently being employed, and more generally how the 21st century airspace can be safely and efficiently shared by outer space and civil aviation operators.
UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo highlighted that the "first step is to establish a common understanding of existing regulations and practices. This in turn will provide a solid foundation for identifying and addressing challenges and opportunities related to emerging space activities, taking into account the interests of all society and ensuring that it is accessible and open to all."
The ICAO/UNOOSA Aerospace Symposium was the first in a planned series of joint meetings of the two UN bodies, aimed at strengthening dialogue between their communities on airspace management, commercial space travel and many other related issues and activities. The next iteration of the Aerospace symposium is planned for 2016.
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