This year’s SpaceNews Icon Awards celebrated the tremendous growth, recent successes, and all-around upswing of the commercial, military, and civil space industries. A highlight of the afternoon was a panel discussion hosted by SpaceNews senior staff writers Jeff Foust and Sandra Erwin, with some of the award winners. During the panel, guests were asked to discuss the industry’s crowning achievements from the past year, some of the main obstacles or challenges currently posing a risk to continued development in space, and what most excites them about the future, among other things.
Joining the panel this year were:
- Isar Aerospace CCO Stella Guillen, who accepted the award for Startup of the Year
- OneWeb Technologies CEO Kevin Steen, who accepted the Deal of the Year award for Eutelsat’s acquisition of OneWeb
- OSIRIS-REx project manager Richard Burns, who accepted the Civil Space Achievement of the Year for the NASA mission’s successful asteroid sample return
- Mark Skinner, the Aerospace Corporation’s senior project leader for space traffic management who accepted the Space Stewardship Award on behalf of T.S. Kelso
- Small Satellite Conference Chair Pat Patterson, whose conference won the Unsung Hero Award
- Col. Richard Kniseley, who accepted the Military Organization of the Year award on behalf of Space System Command’s Commercial Space Office and who delivered the award ceremony’s keynote address
In the video above, the panel discussion begins at 50:30. A full transcript of the discussion is below.
Jeff Foust: Before I start doing individual questions for each panelist, I’ll start off with one question for everybody on the panel. Notice here we have a very diverse set of expertise. We have government and commercial, we have U.S. and international, [we have a] very broad perspective. So I want to ask each of the panelists their view on what they think is the biggest space milestone, this year, at least so…
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