The SCO at IAC 2024: plenary session, 14th Steering committee and awards

Published on 28/10/2024

Every year, the SCO has a strong presence at the IAC. It is the preferred venue for holding one of its two annual steering committees and welcoming new members, and the alliance now has 50 signatories. The 2024 edition is also marked by a plenary session devoted entirely to SCO and the presentation of the Eurisy Hubert Curien Prize. Here's a look back at these three highlights.

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Plenary session "Space in the age of climate change". © SCO

Held in Milan (Italy) from 14 to 18 October 2024, the 75th International Astronautical Congress attracted more than 11,000 visitors from 120 countries.

14th SCO Steering Committee

On Tuesday 15 October 2024, the Steering Committee, introduced by Mr. Giovanni Rum of the ASI, as host country, was attended by 50 participants, including 20 in person.

Following the signing of the SCO Charter by the NSSA and an update on the 2023-2025 Work Programme, the Global Awareness Raising Working Group presented its progress, including the production (in progress) of an annual SCO activity report. All signatories are invited to join this working group to make the SCO's voice heard at global level.

Referring to the call for projects currently open until 17 November 2024, three projects were presented to give concrete examples of SCO certification: CACAO (Italy), to facilitate carbon credit trading, DEW-PH (Philippines), to generate maps of agricultural drought, and SeSaM (France) to forecast the proliferation of sargassum algae.

On 15 October 2024, the NSSA (Bahrain), represented by Mohamed Al-Aseeri (left), signed the SCO Charter, here represented by Lionel Suchet (CNES). After CERD (Djibouti) on 11 October 2024 and ISU (France) on 15 July 2024, these new memberships bring the total number of signatories to the SCO Charter to 50. © SCO

A glance on diary

The SCO is maintaining an active presence on the international scene, with the COP29 coming up soon, followed by the UNOOSA World Space Forum, the CRSCAAE (Conference on Remote Sensing and Collaborative Analysis of Atmospheric Environment), the GEO Global Forum, the ESA Living Planet Symposium and the COP30 in 2025.

From left to right : Rodrigo Leonardi (AEB), Ronald Tong (OSTIn), François Jocteur-Monrozier (CNES), Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (CNES), Laurent Boisnard (CNES), John Wensveen (ISU), Charles Wooldridge (NOAA), Joanna Ruiter (NSO), Rasha Al-Amad (NSSA), Matteo Picchiani (ASI), Giovanni Rum (ASI), Alexia Freigneaux (CNES), Frédéric Bretar (CNES), Anja Sundal (NOSA), Sirikul Hutasavi (GISTDA). On screen are Anne-Claire Grossias (UNOOSA), Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (CNES), Selima Ben Mustapha (SNSA), Zhengqiang Li (CAS), Mohamed JALLUDIN (CERD), and Ismat Bakhishov (Azercosmos). © SCO

The SCO Plenary: "Observing the Earth, Serving our Societies: Space in the Age of Climate Change".

Co-organized by the French (CNES), American (NOAA) and Italian (ASI) agencies, the plenary session on Wednesday 16 October sought to highlight all the players in the value chain for producing services for users, as well as the diversity of users and services needed to support policies to combat climate change.

Seven participants took part in two sessions (opening photo), moderated by Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (CNES):

The end users (Andrea Taramelli from the Copernicus User Forum, Florence Rabier from the ECMWF and Giovanni Sylos Labini from Planetek Italia) presented their work and expressed their current and future needs in terms of services using space data;
Agency representatives (Michael Ford from NOAA, Simonetta Cheli from ESA, Philippe Baptiste from CNES and Roberto Formaro from ASI) expressed their views on the current and future actions they are taking to meet the needs of end-users.

Presentation of the Eurisy Hubert Curien Award

On Wednesday 16 October 2024, at the heart of the IAC, the SCO received the Hubert Curien Award, which "rewards outstanding efforts to help society benefit from space". The honor of receiving this award is so great and significant that we have devoted a news item to it in near real time!

👉Read the dedicated article