Alan Thompson is Head of Government Affairs in Skyrora, supporting the launch vehicle manufacture to achieve its ambition of providing regular access to Space, launching from the UK.

Alan is responsible for managing and engaging with all key stakeholders across industry and Government. This includes Skyrora’s involvement in the Parliamentary Space Committee, industry associations such as ADS UK Space, Space Scotland and others, and direct engagement with all government authorities, including the Space flight regulators – UKSA and CAA, academic stakeholders, and broader industry.

A member of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) and with a background in international trade and development all give Alan a new perspective to Space industry development in UK, in particular the ambition to challenge the current economic paradigm and the shift that the New Space economy will necessitate.

Enrico is a systems engineer in the new ESA Sustainability Engineering section under the Technology directorate, and he is integrated in the ESA Clean Space Office.

He leads preliminary ESA missions design in the CDF (Concurrent Design Facility), provides systems engineering support for in-space transportation projects as well as for LCA and Ecodesign topic in ESA. In particular he leads the EcoStar project and the ESA LCA Handbook update.

Enrico is also involved in expanding the knowledge of space sustainability and tackling the upper-atmospheric impact inclusion in LCA for space systems.

Fionagh is a visual ethnographer, ecologist, human geographer, philosopher of technology, ethicist – based in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (Durham University in the UK).

She is interested in how knowledge and ideas are created within our everyday world – focusing on what we do rather than what we think we do. She works with video, camera, paper and conversation.
Current interests: Responsible & Sustainable Space (dark skies, dark matter, the darker side of satellites); land rights (terra, water and sky); extension of human senses through technologies, and the mythical rise of robots/AI over humans.
She is a nomadic researcher travelling across disciplines (from forestry to medicine and the arts to astrophysics). Fieldwork locations include the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, the islands of the Scottish Hebrides, the consulting spaces of UK hospitals and mountaintop astronomical observatories.

Marco Tantardini is Space Strategy and Business Development (S&BD) Lead for Europe at Lockheed Martin.

From May 2021 to October 2022, he has been an Expert for Space Policy in the Italian Government, in the Office of the Prime Minister, and Advisor to the Chair of the inter-Ministerial Committee for Space Policy (the Italian National Space Council).

He holds a BSc in Aerospace Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, received a MSc in Space Engineering from the Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, and completed the executive program Senior Executives in National and International Security (SENIS) at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was featured on the May 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Matt Jenkins joined Maxar Intelligence as the Chief Space Systems Officer in September 2024. He brings two decades of systems engineering leadership, including extensive experience in serving remote sensing and highly technical government missions.

With extensive technical expertise in passive and active electro-optical and infrared systems, lasers, and radio frequency (RF) systems, he has helped build dozens of advanced spacecraft that are in orbit today.

Prior to joining Maxar Intelligence, Matt was Head of Engineering for Amazon Project Kuiper’s Government Solutions team, where he led the design of advanced and resilient systems to support U.S. national security priorities. Before that, he was the Director of Space Engineering at Pacific Defense Strategies, where he led the development of innovative RF payloads for national security and space domain awareness missions.

Earlier in his career, he spent more than 15 years at Raytheon, including serving as Chief Systems Engineer for the company’s missile warning and defense systems business, as well as leading Raytheon’s Space System Engineering team. During his time there, he led the team responsible for designing the optical imaging instrument in Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites.

Matt earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Optics from the University of Rochester, and a Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He also holds two remote sensing-related patents, and developed 20+ trade secrets in optical system assembly integration and test.

Munetaka Ueno is the Research Director of the Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center at JAXA, and also holds professorships at Osaka University and Kobe University.

He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Kyoto University in 1994. Afterward, he joined the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo, and in 2009, he moved to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), JAXA. At JAXA, he has held several key positions, including Head of the Mission Instrument Technology Group, Director of the Space Science Program Office, and Chief Engineer.

His research interests span observational astronomy, solar system science, scientific instrumentation, and systems engineering in space development. He has contributed to several major space missions, including AKARI (an infrared astronomical satellite), AKATSUKI (a Venus orbiter), and the HAYABUSA asteroid mission. He has also served as a Director of the Astronomical Society of Japan and as Chair of the Standing Space Agency Subcommittee under the International Project Management Committee.

Dr. Ueno is actively involved in supporting space-related startups in Japan. He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to ArkEdge Space, ispace, and Letara.

He is deeply involved in supporting space startups in Japan. He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to ArkEdge Space, ispace, and Letara, and is also a co-founder and board member of Power Laser Inc.