Space Generation Advisory Council represents the global youth in front of the United Nations as well as other international institutions and governments. During this 45th session of the UN COPUOS Scientific & Technical Subcommittee Austrian SEDS students made a presentation titled: “ Bridging the gap or why students of the 21st century no longer reach for the stars.” You can see the videos from the presentation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJUdxnrpJd8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zonkkDiBuk
In addition they wanted to share their experience at the United Nations as well as their presentation with the Space Generation community:
http://www.spacegeneration.org/files/downloads/COPUOS/UNO.SEDSAT_II_FINA...
SEDSAT II at the COPUOS UN conference Vienna
By Alexandra Ruths and Paul Schmitzberger
written by Alexandra Ruths
First one head then three then about 15 heads turn around – half of the “distinguished delegates” crowd in one of the main conference halls of the Vienna UN building turn around to take a look at us. The two of us sit in the back of the conference hall, on the observer seats of the SGAC. It is the annual February COPUOS meeting at the United Nations in Vienna. As we speak, we are too busy concentrating on our speech and handling the power point remote control- too busy to notice the attentive heads turning around. We get to speak at the end of the Wednesday afternoon session in the section of “technical presentations”. The agenda announces our speech titled “ Bridging the gap or why students of the 21st century no longer reach for the stars.” A rather unusual title preceding the rather unusual presentation.
“Thank you Mr. Chairman,” I start saying, “good afternoon distinguished delegates,” Paul takes over – and now we have the floor for the next twenty minutes. We present taking turns, finishing each others sentences- we are almost leading a dialogue, talking about space today, space tomorrow, about the next generation of students and our project SEDSAT II. ….
We address the issue of attracting the next generation – young motivated minds who want to commit themselves in the field of space related work. Talking from our own experience we know that for many young people space is “too far away”. It is not graspable enough, not present enough. When students decide what path of studies to go into, they often reject space related work because this path “does not seem to lead anywhere.” This is not necessarily true. However the prevailing perception of space is one of a sector which is almost impossible to enter and to work in. A sector that is highly exclusive and fully satisfied. We conclude that there is a big gap between the reality and the perception among students - a perception which keeps a lot of otherwise motivated young potentials from getting in touch with space related work. This loss of potentials should be prevented and therefore this gap must be bridged. SEDSAT II is one example of an initiative that can help to bring students from around the world in touch with space field work.
SEDSAT II is a student initiative for the realization of a globally organized project – namely the planning, the design and maintenance of the SEDSAT II remote sensing cube satellite. 40 students from over the world, organized in eight teams, will enable the launch of the satellite into its orbit in the fourth quarter of 2008. By then the project will have established itself as a future oriented, positive example of a global cooperation – a glooperation. A Cubesat weighs 1000gramm, circling Earth in a height of 300-750km at a speed of around 27.000 km/hour. it manages one full Earth circulation within 100 minutes. Students working on this project experiment and develop a new, modern kind of cooperation- glooperation- which is bound to gain importance in the years to come. People from all continents work on one project and with the help of modern communication are able to create a globally planned and designed end product. The project SEDSAT II proves that cooperation on a global scale is possible with the help of modern communication. Individual phases of the project are developed in various parts of the world by sub teams in e.g. Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Rumania, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Canada, Nigeria, Russia, Philippines, Us, India and brought together in a final end product – SEDSAT II cube satellite. This new way of global team working and planning demands a new way of organization, intercultural competence and use of communication which will be the challenge and great learning value of SEDSAT II. In the near future, one does not only need to have team abilities but global team abilities. A challenge that students of the SEDSAT II projects learn to meet……
As we speak and speak time passes by very fast. We hardly realize the Space generation people filming us and the only notice the camera flash from time to time. Then twenty minutes are over – it felt like five minutes.
“Distinguished delegates thank you for your attention, we are more than happy to answer all your questions,” Paul concludes.
We should not take it personally if no questions arise, most of the times there won’t be an interest in questions, we were advised before. However this time it seems to be different. Two delegates approach us with questions, thanking us for our input and asking further questions about SEDSAT II. Fully aware of the attention, we now enjoy the question answer session and can not stop smiling afterwards, sitting over coffee with the SGAC team….
Concluding we would like to thank the SGAC very much for providing us with the opportunity to present at the UN in Vienna. They were a great help and a wonderful support. Thank you very much for giving us a chance!
To find out more about the SEDSATII project please click here: http://sedsat2.seds.org/
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