On the margins of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of COPUOS, ESPI Director Jean-Jacques Tortora took part in a panel during a French-speaking event oganized by Le Cercle, an association organizing events promoting diplomacy. In front of an audience of space practitioners, students and non-space attendants, Mr. Tortora outlined the difference between cooperation and diplomacy and stressed the main reasons why diplomacy is necessary in the space sector.

The topic of STM has been gaining considerable attention in recent years. With the goal to further international dialogue on what a possible STM framework might look like and how it can be implemented, ESPI and UNIDIR jointly organized an Evening Event "Space Traffic Management: National and International Consideration" on 06 February 2020, on the margins of the 57th Session of the UNCOPUS Scientific and Technical Subcommittee.

ESPI partnered this year again with Business Bridge Europe for the 12th European Space Conference. This year, government officials and high-level representatives of institutions and industry gathered on January 21st and 22nd in Brussels to discuss the European space policy in a new decade and in the context of EU's global ambitions. ESPI Director Jean-Jacques Tortora moderated four sessions.

The demand for access to spectrum, a shared and finite resource for telecommunications, is rapidly growing worldwide, leading to spectrum shortages and concerns of interferences, even among different types of applications. This ESPI Briefs looks into the evolving competition dynamics among space and non-space applications and investigates the impact of the latest spectrum-related developments on the space sector.