June Public Meeting | Space Debris: Why it's a problem and what the European Space Agency is doing about it

This is the free monthly meeting of the Space Association of Australia - all welcome!

We'll be in the Function Room on the first floor of the Caulfield RSL. The venue is disabled friendly and includes a lift. Meals are available at reasonable prices. Ample car parking is available immediately behind the RSL or in St Georges Road. Trams and trains run within 200 metres of the venue.

The meeting will be streamed live here and then made available on-demand via the Space Association's YouTube channel - SAA.TV.

Our guest speaker, Kjetil Wormnes, is a mechatronics engineer working at the European Space Agency (ESA)

Kjetil leads technology research and development activities at the European Space Agency's automation and robotics section of ESTEC - the European Space Research and Technology Centre - ESA's technical heart located in the Netherlands. He has been in charge of activities for developing space debris capturing technologies and has supported both early mission studies for a space debris removal mission as well as e.Deorbit, a European Space Agency mission to remove space debris currently under development. 

Kjetil also leads research and development activities in other areas of space robotics, and in particular orbital and low gravity robotics and has recently established a new laboratory at ESTEC to specifically support R&D in low gravity robotics. 

Prior to working for ESA, Kjetil was employed in Australia at the CSIRO where he was working on the early designs of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope and supported Australia's bid for the Square Kilometre Array. 

Currently, Kjetil is living in Melbourne while on sabbatical from the European Space Agency.