Cosmos for Humanity

  PROBLEM

Our problem is actually also your problem, and it has a name: Space debris.

💎 Idea

The vision of our NGO is to carry the values of the Red Cross into space and to become its alter-ego on outer space issues. Faced with :

• the impossibility for states to agree on binding rules on economic space activities due to major geopolitical tensions
• the sovereignty issues that will be faced by the companies responsible for carrying out space debris removal operations 
• the refusal of the various actors to assume their responsibilities
• the absence of sufficient economic incentives to encourage the emergence of operators to maintain orbits

Our statement is that only a neutral and independent entity, working for humanity in an impartial and disinterested manner, is equipped to meet the challenges of sustainable management of the Earth's orbits and the universal aspirations of humanity in the Cosmos. 

Humanity is reaching a point of divergence. We must act now or risk placing ourselves in an irreversible situation: announcements of the launch of new satellite constellations are multiplying, but this is still not the case for the means allocated to the sustainable management of orbits.

In a few years, humanity plans to send more than six times as many satellites as it has in 60 years.
At this rate, without sufficient resources being allocated to sustainable orbit management, disaster is inevitable.

The solution: to start to solve this problem, the sustainable management of the access to outer space for humanity must cease to be the sole responsibility of public authorities and the space industry. The interests of citizens and non-space companies also need to be considered they must be able to participate politically but also financially in the management of access to outer space.

Our mission: to mobilize citizens and companies to empower them to defend their interests in outer space by supporting the action of public authorities and the space industry in order to preserve an ecologically and economically viable access to outer space for humanity.

Our tool : to both encourage citizens and companies to “look up to the sky”, we are designing an ESG label dedicated to the outer space preservation. Through this label, we want to create the economic incentive that is missing to organize the sustainable management of Earth orbits.

To encourage this "look up to the sky" attitude, we built for this hackathon a small tool that simply shows the space debris that have fallen to Earth in the last ten years. Our goal is to raise awareness of this very specific type of space pollution by giving them an overview, but also to ask people to document the falls they have heard and send us the following information: Date, Coordinates, Photos etc.

Here is the link to that tool : http://u.osmfr.org/m/829034/

🛰️ EU space technologies

With the support of the French space agency (CNES) we are building the concept of the “Outer Space Footprint” (OSF). Our objective is to be able to quantify the outer space pollutions (atmospheric, extra-atmospheric, ground-based, luminous interferences) produced by the space industry over the entire life cycle of a satellite, considering the environmental impact from its launch into orbit to its end of life.

In this way, we will be able to identify the truly sustainable space operators. But more: we will allow the economic actors to know their own indirect OSF, inherited from their satellite data providers, and to objectively show them their responsibility in the space pollutions. At the same time, their responsibility will be shown to the citizens as the label will help the consumers to identify the economic actors that are working with space operators that have sustainable behaviors.

We are convinced that it is this double pressure, from citizens and companies, that is most likely to incite space operators to change the paradigm of space sustainability.

Our label will be controlled and certified by citizens, independently, transparently and forgery-proof thanks to the blockchain we want to build into to the Cosmos ecosystem. Citizens from around the world, the Cosmos Rangers, will be remunerated for their participation through our App by reviewing the extra-financial documents concerning the environmental impact published by the companies. 

Thanks to the Non-financial reporting directive (NFRD), the EU regulation has made mandatory the publication of all the data needed for our label. Except for outer space data, until the operationalization of the OSF.

🏦 Space for the Financial World

Obviously, our NGO aims to solve the #1 challenge.

The funds raised through this label will be allocated to support studies on space pollution and the development of technologies to reduce this pollution. Our ambition is to be able to participate in the financing of the first active debris removal operations in 2025 by ClearSpace and Astroscale.

Furthermore, once the OSF will be officially designed, our objective is to convince a federation of European space public institutions to oversee the OSF’s certification of all the space companies. And make it mainstream, as the Global Footprint Network made it with their “Carbon footprint” concept.

The documentation of the outer space impact needs to be mandatory for all the companies under the European regulation. And this impact must have consequences in terms of “sustainable finance”, punishing companies that use unsustainable space operators and directing sustainable investment flows to the sustainable space sector. 

So, to make the documentation of the OSF mandatory for companies, and give it both legal and economic consequences, we propose:

• To add the preservation of outer space as the 7th environmental objective of the EU green taxonomy
• To include the documentation of the environmental impact of space activities into the final version of the Corporate sustainable reporting directive (CSRD)

🤼 Team

Claire ELSS : former legal advisor at the European Space Agency (ESA), she has worked on the legal issues facing major European space debris recovery projects.

David MANY : former geopolitical analyst, reserve officer in the French Army, he is working on the tools enabling the concept of "Citizen intelligence".

Patrick LOPEZ : Photographer, Web3 enthousiast and dev beginner.

Our Github's repository for the Cassini's Hackathon.

This hackathon is for us a great opportunity to meet new Cosmos Rangers. So, if you are interested into building at the crossroads of Web3 x Space x Sustainability, let's join us !