The Global Network on Sustainability in Space (GNOSIS)

This is a Network+ proposal for the Futures programme of STFC. Its main aim is to help a willing STFC scientific community tackle some of the fundamental problems associated with the sustainable use of space. Its main aims are actually to inform and orientate the STFC community, by demonstrating their ability to impact on this 21st Century Challenge. There are currently far more cars on earth then we know of space debris but we do not consider the "car problem" originating out of the shear number of cars and thats because, in general, we know where they are. This is not the situation with space debris which is a problem only because we don't understand their positions & movement sufficiently well. The STFC community has all the skills needed to understand this material and its movement relative to the satellite population.

This Network+ proposal is thus a community building exercise and forming interactions with industry and government partners in order to tackle the debris problem. Most of the activities are designed to help these interactions occur and as there are already some linkage between STFC scientists and this area then a few significant problems will be tackled. In line with best practice the community will be consulted over the themes for discussion at workshops and sandpits and more detailed studies will be examined by an expert panel. All projects etc will need to provide full action list and reports outlining successes and failures and lessons learnt.

Providing societal and economic impact through the application of expertise from the STFC-funded research community to the Space Situational Awareness/Space Traffic Management (SSA/STM) domain is the primary goal of the GNOSIS Network+.

We envisage GNOSIS generating:
1. Economic impact by aiding space companies to exploit expertise from STFC-funded science in the development and deployment of more effective SSA/STM capabilities;
2. Societal impact through public engagement activities that present the link between the scientific and economic use of space through SSA/STM; and
3. Societal and economic impact through providing students and young researchers with motivation to fill the SSA/STM roles that are opening up in the commercial space sector.