Online event
The ‘NewSpace’ industry promises many opportunities for advances in the exploration and use of outer space. However, the space industry also contributes to making sensitive space launch technologies commercially available globally and potentially creates new pathways for missile proliferation. The changing nature of the commercial space industry and the challenges and opportunities it poses are important topics for the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the main multilateral export control regime focused on missiles and other uncrewed delivery systems.
This webinar brings together a distinguished panel of space, missile and export control experts from research, industry and policy to discuss the challenges the NewSpace industry poses to missile non-proliferation and export controls. The panel will explore how these challenges can be addressed through national and multilateral export control instruments such as the MTCR. The panellists will discuss the NewSpace industry and related missile proliferation risks. They will also consider how states can use export controls to promote legitimate commercial space activities while preventing those activities from contributing to missile proliferation.
The webinar is the second in a series within a larger project implemented by SIPRI on ‘Quo Vadis MTCR: The Missile Technology Control Regime at a Crossroads’, with generous support from the German Federal Foreign Office and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
Welcoming remarks
Kolja Brockmann, Project Lead, ‘Quo Vadis MTCR: The Missile Technology Control Regime at a Crossroads’, and Researcher, Dual-use and Arms Trade Control Programme, SIPRI
Moderator
Nivedita Raju, Researcher, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Programme, SIPRI
Speakers
Almudena Azcárate Ortega, Associate Researcher, Space Security and WMD Programmes, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)
Andrew Horton (personal capacity), Chair, Technical Experts Meeting, MTCR; Government Senior Advisor on Export Control Technical Policy, British Government
Alan Thompson, Head of Government Relations, Skyrora Ltd
Watch a recording of the webinar here.