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Dallas Campbell: Hello and
welcome to Outer Orbit, our little
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companion podcast this week live
from the ISAM Conference 2025.
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I'm your host, Dallas Campbell, and
today we're gonna be hearing all about
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the importance of standardisation We've
got Gary Cannon, the Space Segment Lead
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from the Satellite Applications Catapult
and Stella Tkatchova the program manager
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from the European Innovation Council.
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Gary Cannon: I'd like to set the stage
by explaining why standards for ISAM
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are not just helpful, but essential
to unlocking the next phase of
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sustainable and scalable space activity.
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We're entering era, were servicing,
upgrading, refueling, and even
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assembling spacecraft on orbit are no
longer the stuff of science fiction.
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Missions like Northrop Grummans, MEVS
and MRV, Astroscale's Elsa and ADRAS
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Missions, ESA's ClearSpace, UKSA's
Cosmic and Clear Missions have shown
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that ISAM technologies are not only
possible they're increasingly necessary.
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Well, here's the challenge.
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The orbital environment is congested,
diverse, and largely unregulated when
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it comes to servicing interfaces,
safety protocols, or design principles.
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Without standards, every mission
becomes bespoke, which means
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expensive to design, hard to insure,
and nearly impossible to scale.
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Standards provide the common language
that enables safe and interoperable
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servicing operations, lower mission
risk and cost, easier regulatory
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approval and a stronger case for
investment in this growing sector.
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So what's the role of standards
in de-risking the market?
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From a technical standpoint, standards
underpin interoperability between
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services and clients across different
orbits and even among nations.
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They define what a docking mechanism
should look like, how a spacecraft
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should communicate during rendezvous,
and how to ensure false tolerance.
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From a commercial perspective,
standards reduce ambiguity.
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If an operator knows that their
satellite can be serviced by
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any number of providers, thanks
for a modular or standardized
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interface, that's a business case.
Load full transcript
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If insurers know that safe proximity
operations follow agreed best practices,
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that's a risk profile they can underwrite.
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If regulators can see clearly defined,
internationally accepted procedures,
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that's a policy they can support.
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So where are we now?
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The good news is that we're
not starting from scratch.
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Now is the time to begin aligning
these efforts, identifying the
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gaps, and mapping a way forward.
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So what's at stake?
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This isn't just the technical exercise.
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Standards influence who leads, who
benefits, and how fast we grow.
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If we don't define open, fair, and
interoperable frameworks now we risk
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a future of proprietary ecosystems,
limited service and compatibility,
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and increased orbital risk.
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Today we've designed the session
to reflect the breadth and depth
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of the standardization challenge
and the opportunities therein.
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With that, it's my pleasure to welcome
our keynote speaker, Stella Tkatchova
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is the program manager for Space
Systems at the European Innovation
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Council, and has managed the Artez
Indigo Private Public Partnership.
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Gov SATCOM O3B and the Copernicus
Sentinel One and Three programs.
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She's co-founded a company in the
ADR domain, worked on Galileo and ISS
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programs at Aztec, and holds a PhD by
the faculty of Aerospace Engineering
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at the Technical University of Delft.
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She's a published author and podcaster
highlighting the commercialization of
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space technology, space debris mitigation,
in-Orbit servicing, it's a long list,
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active debris removal, in space logistics
and cis lunar exploration, and is the
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founder and Former Editor in Chief
of the International Journal of Space
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Technology of Management and Innovation.
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Stela Tkatchova: Thank
you very much, Gary.
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Thank you very much for
the honor to be invited.
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What is the EIC role
in the space industry?
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So the European Innovation Council funds
game changing, high risk innovation, and
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the beauty of the EIC is that we funded
from very real low TRL to high TRL.
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Our program is actually bottom up
with Pathfinder Open and Accelerator
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Open and top down with challenges
defined by the program managers.
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Me as the program manager for space
systems, actually not only I define the
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challenges, I sit in the evaluations,
but I also manage the space portfolio.
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So the space portfolio has three pillars.
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Space Debris Sustainability,
which collects projects, looking
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at removing debris, remediation,
mitigation, but also In-Orbit satellite
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servicing, active debris removal.
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Enabling Space Technologies is
all the subsystems of a satellite.
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We have propulsion, panel antennas,
but we also have in space manufacturing
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of solar arrays which is very
strongly linked to the ISAM a domain.
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And the third pillar is Earth Observation
and Meteorology, so as you see, we
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have an extremely diverse portfolio.
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We know very well that current satellites
are designed, built and launched into
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space not to be service and repaired,
and we know that there is a lack of
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plug and play architecture, and that's
why we are pushing and discussing very
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much modularity and modular platforms.
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What I've observed is when we launched
the course of the last, two or three
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years, I observed diverse concepts,
for example, for space debris
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remediation and in space recycling.
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Clearly the experiment phase.
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What I observed in some of the accelerator
projects doing in-Orbit satellite
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servicing, they'll be developing a
robotic arm, which will be at the
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certain TRL level, but that the grippers
will be at different TRL levels.
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So there is a lot of complexity and the
TRL levels of the different technologies
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or concepts are completely different.
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The other issue is also time to market too
long, unknown profits and unclear markets.
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Despite the successful launch of Math
One and Math Two, five years ago.
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Very different value chains.
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In the different segments, and as you
mentioned, Gary, interoperability.
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The direct benefits from interoperability
and direct cost savings are not clearly
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defined, a topic on which I do believe we
need to touch on strongly in the future.
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Opportunities, we need to have more
and more technology demos, and that
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will be opportunities like the ISO
platform mission or the program we
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have this year for in-orbit satellite
servicing, funding, proximity, operation
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in space, refueling, and so on.
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Cos components are widely used.
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There is actually at the moment
initial demand driven by institutional
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customers, and also another very
important aspect is, and this is to my
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colleagues from ESA on the zero debris,
debris mitigation and remediation
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integrated in spacecraft design for
the future is a critical importance,
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and they're working towards that.
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So I do believe that ISAM is
an emerging market opportunity.
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So this is our roadmap today.
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In 2023 we had the Pathfinder challenge
about in-space solar energy harvesting.
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We selected nine projects, they're
working in three working groups,
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solar cells, wireless power,
transmission space, green proportion,
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and customer driven applications,
and there you see ISAM already
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in-orbit, satellite services inside.
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We just closed the call of the
Pathfinder on space debris mitigation
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and remediation and in space recycling,
which I do believe is a topic of
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huge relevance for this audience.
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And finally, we have the topic of 50
million for IOS is space transportation
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and space-based cyber resilience.
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Other challenges is when we called
for the space debris call we received
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many, many proposals on space
debris mitigation and remediation,
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very few on in-space recycling.
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Now in the role as a program
manager, we contribute to the
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Pathfinder, which are the committee.
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So the independent experts who assess
and they make sure that there is a
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balance of projects Where the projects
have to have a shared component or
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potential complementarity, they have to
have common synergies and work together.
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Having projects in mitigation and
remediation where you have such a
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diversity on the robotic arms, the
orbiting mechanism, magnets, but also
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propellant list technologies like,
lasers status, solar concentration,
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makes it very difficult to talk about
standards or creates a automatic gap.
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Not to talk about in space recycling
or reusing orbital assets, which was
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more focused actually on mechanical.
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But we received some interesting
proposals also on laser welding.
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So this challenge was addressed
by me as a program manager by
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actually requesting the projects who
apply to do portfolio management.
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What does that mean?
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Every project will propose what are
the gaps they want to identify in the
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technology, regulatory, transition to
technology innovation, some of them
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proposed even cost benefit analysis,
early commercialization, and so on.
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So even before they selected,
these projects have to propose some
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ideas, and then later on during the
evaluation, the experts also take
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under consideration this aspect.
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So what happened was that there was
clearly gaps in the regulation, and here
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I put on purpose that I would like to
have the working groups, particularly
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for this space challenge to work
together because these to contribute
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to better understanding or improved
the standards and regulative framework.
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So this is an important aspect because
all the projects, when they're selected,
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they will work together and they will
present all the results of their research
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activities, either identifying regulation
gaps, scientific market technological into
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a strategic portfolio plan, a common one.
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So this is a way which we are addressing
here at the EIC, this question.
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Now, on the other hand, the
EIC is an executive agency
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of the European Commission.
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We do not do policies.
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My colleagues from DG DEFIS and I
work in close collaboration with them.
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I provide them with the recommendations
from the different working groups.
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So, in conclusion, what I saw in our
space portfolio the last two years
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linked to this topic, very strong
interest for space debris mitigation and
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proposing technologies for remediation.
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However, I expected much
more on in space recycling.
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There were very few proposals, very,
very few, and that was difficult
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while we were building the portfolio.
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However, most of the proposals did
make a very clear link that the
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technologies they proposing for,
active debris removal, robotic arms or
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grippers and so on there also the next
future application is ISAM and ISOS.
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The proposals, all of them, which
are selected at the moment are
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very much complimentary to the
future evolution of ISAM missions.
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What did I see?
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Space-based SSA, a lot of AI machine
learning for autonomous space operations,
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a lot of proposals for robotic
arms gripper, but very excitingly,
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also, laser a blazer technologies.
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These are the areas where I
observed growing interests.
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I do believe in some areas we'll be
mainly institutionally driven, but
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others will be really market driven.
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It's too early to say which one will
succeed, but we will see, and this
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is the long-term future, I foresee.
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I think that all the capabilities
we're developing of today will help
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us for future learner missions.
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Thank you very much.
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Dallas Campbell: To hear future
episodes of In-Orbit, don't forget.
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Be sure to subscribe on your favorite
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