Austria

The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) was set up by the General Assembly in 1959 to govern the exploration and use of space for the benefit of all humanity: for peace, security and development. The Committee was tasked with reviewing international cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space, studying space-related activities that could be undertaken by the United Nations, encouraging space research programmes, and studying legal problems arising from the exploration of outer space.

The Committee meets annually in Vienna, Austria, to discuss questions relating to current and future activities in space. Topics for discussion include maintaining outer space for peaceful purposes, safe operations in orbit, space debris, space weather, the threat from asteroids, the safe use of nuclear power in outer space, climate change, water management, global navigation satellite systems, and questions concerning space law and national space legislation.

The…

The Regional Support Offices Meeting 2023 was conducted and organised by UN-SPIDER at the premises of the VIC in Vienna. It was held back-to-back with the 66th Session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).

The UN-SPIDER programme currently has 27 Regional Support Offices (RSOs). These RSOs are engaged in supporting activities of UN-SPIDER such as technical advisory support, rapid mapping during emergency response, preparing specific publications and contents for the knowledge portal and contributing to the workshop and conferences.

Every year, UN-SPIDER organizes a meeting with the RSOs to discuss the progress and new activities.
At this year’s meeting, 10 RSOs joined the meeting in person, while 5 participated online. 2 candidates to become an RSO joined the meeting in person as guests.…

The 2023 UN/Austria Symposium "Space for climate action: space applications and technologies for sustainability on Earth" will take place in September 12 - 14 both on-site (Graz, Austria) and online.

This year's symposium, also the 29th edition of this series, will discuss the important contributions of space applications and technologies in tackling the challenges of climate change. The focus of the symposium is to showcase the most recent initiatives, experiences and best practices in mitigating and adapting to climate change and supporting sustainability on Earth. Further to creating awareness of how Member States use space technologies, the symposium will highlight how the space sector is being adapted to reduce its own impact on the climate crisis. The symposium would collect ideas and contributions to define future activities.

To raise awareness of relevant…