The OECD Space Forum Secretariat in the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation wishes to acknowledge with sincere thanks the support provided by the organisations forming the Steering Group of the OECD Space Forum: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Canada; the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), France; the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Germany; the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Italy; the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Korea; the Netherlands Space Office, Netherlands; the Norwegian Space Agency and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, Norway; the Swiss Space Office, Switzerland; the UK Space Agency (UKSA), United Kingdom; the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States; and the European Space Agency.
The Secretariat recognises the kind support provided by specific Steering Group members at different times of the project, notably the UK Space Agency when drafting the initial policy paper, as well as the support of the Canadian Space Agency and NASA for the co-organisation of the OECD Workshop on the Economics of Space Debris, hosted by CSA in Montreal in June 2019. We also appreciate the detailed comments of the individual members of the Space Forum’s Steering Group on drafts of documents leading up to this publication, and from the experts in their respective organisations. We thank in particular David Haight, Elle Agnew and James Jarvis from CSA; Christophe Bonnal from CNES; Hendrik Fischer and Manuel Metz from DLR; Patrick Besha from NASA; Thomas Bleeker from the Netherlands Space Office; Johann Richard from the Swiss Space Office; and Stephen Adam from the UK Space Agency. The Secretariat and the authors of Chapter 9 would also like to thank Tanya Scalia, Simonetta Di Ciaccio, Mauro Piermaria, Fiorella Coliolo and Matteo Coletta from the Italian Space Agency for their support in data collection.
We also warmly thank the +90 experts who participated in associated workshops, in Montreal in 2019 and in the OECD virtual workshop in November 2021. We also thank the commercial satellite operators who kindly agreed to share their expertise via a short survey that was circulated to more than 20 operators in July-October 2019 to gain a better understanding of industry perspectives on the issues of space debris mitigation, and to inform policy discussions. Survey respondents provided crucial insights on operators’ practices and useful pointers for future actions to mitigate space debris.
Finally, very special acknowledgements go to the academic contributors to this project as authors of different chapters, who have provided valuable new evidence on the economics of space sustainability. Without them this publication would not have been possible.