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Mr. Chairman, distinguished delgates, In 2007 the SGAC continued to conduct a diverse range of activities towards its goals of representing young space professionals to the UN, space agencies and other space entities around the globe on space issues. We are pleased to report to you on SGAC’s highlights of the past year in which priority attention has been given to rejuvenating SGAC membership (including officers) and starting new projects. We remain a young organisation but we continue to go from strength to strength.
The SGAC has also contributed a great deal to space policy this year. A delegation of members attended the February, April and June meetings of UN-COPUOS. The major output of SGAC for this year has been our 50 year vision which was researched and planned to provide space policy input to The Future of Space Exploration Symposium which was held at Boston University in April. SGAC conducted a two round survey among global youth to derive the 50 year vision, including a roadmap for the next 50 years.
In April the annual Yuri’s Night was held – with over 125 simultaneous celebrations around the world to share and educate the public about space. A tremendous success as usual.
In September of this year the SGAC convened its the sixth consecutive Space Generation Congress (SGC) held in conjunction with the IAF's International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Hyderabad, India. SGAC is working in close cooperation with both the IAF, and the ESA Outreach programme to do this years conference. Over 150 people from 63 countries attended and it was a great success. Many ideas from the conference were fed into the main IAC by the participants. In addition to a very successful conference, the SGAC was asked for a consecutive time by the IAF to help organise the Young Professionals Programme for the IAC. This was also a success.
2007 marked a very special occasion – the 50th anniversary of the space age with the launching of Sputnik, as well as the 40th anniversary of the Outer Space Treaty – the magna carta of space law. SGAC attended, presented and co-hosted some of the events held in line with the anniversary. We look forward to helping the space community at large to commemorate the tremendous successes and progress to date and help to set in place visions and plans for another 50 years in space.
Several opportunities that SGAC has begun planning for in this regard is the ISU symposium to be held at ISU in February where we will present a further developed roadmap for the next 50 years in space as well as policy input to all three UN COPUOS meetings in 2008 and of course the SGAC annual conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. In addition, during the ISU Symposium, SGAC will make a presentation on the role of space technology on sustainable development. The Space Generation would like to utilise these opportunities to accelerate our pace in space, ensure that space development helps the quality of life of people around the world and that it remains peaceful.
The developments of SGAC over the year would not be possible without the tremendous work of our Executive staff: we are indebted to their hard work and diligence. Thanks go to them, and to all the other members of the space generation community for their efforts over the year.
We would like to close by thanking Dr. Sergio Camacho, former Director of OOSA, Ms. Alice Lee, Expert of Space Applications at OOSA, and Dr. Kai-Uwe Schrogl from the European Space Policy Institute for their kind support.
We are also very much looking forward to a fruitful cooperation with the newly appointed Director of OOSA, Dr. Mazlan Othman. We wish her the best of luck in this new endeavour and we offer our services in any possible tasks she may have; as the members of Space Generation are always very eager to work on the UNOOSA projects and participate in its activities.
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