Charity Weeden

Humanity is set to return to the Moon—with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen due to fly around it soon!

In anticipation of that historic voyage, the Salt Spring Forum is delighted to welcome Charity Weeden, a former officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force who recently served as Associate Administrator of NASA, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Charity Weeden has more than two decades of military, government and industry experience. She continues to advise political and corporate leaders about the rapidly changing political and technological dimensions of outer space.

Charity Weeden is perfectly qualified to help us understand the dramatic increase in space activities. Indeed, there were just 2,000 operational satellites in orbit in 2015, and today there are more than 13,000!

SpaceX operates about 10,000 of those satellites, providing high-speed Internet to customers worldwide. Those same satellites have shaped the direction of the Ukraine war, enabling low-cost armed drones to be operated at great distances.

The satellites have also created congestion and collision risks in low Earth orbit, light and radio interference with astronomical telescopes, and chemical changes to the upper atmosphere that could, in turn, have climate impacts.

Meanwhile, Earth imaging satellites have proven indispensable for agriculture, weather forecasting, climate science, forest firefighting and disaster relief, as well as military reconnaissance and targeting.

Further away, on the Moon, both the United States and China have plans for permanent human habitations—in competition, not cooperation, with each other.

There’s an awful lot going on in space, and Charity Weeden is the perfect person to situate us. Please join the Salt Spring Forum in a timely discussion about opportunities and risks on the “final frontier”.

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