Space Generation Advisory Council’s Post

✨ #SGx2026 mission success! ✨ We had a blast with our incredible panelists, keynote speakers, and sponsors for making this special event with ASCEND possible. From the young professional lightning talks ⚡to hearing from industry giants and astronauts, we had an amazing weekend: learning lessons about the past launches and history of space, and looking forward and imagining towards the future! It was great to make new friends and reunite with old ones for this keystone #SGAC event 🎉 Thank you to the female leaders of our first panel (Lauren Smith, Northrop Grumman; Charity Weeden, NASA; Sirisha Bandla, Outpost; Deirdre Walsh, ARKA Group, LP; moderated by Darcy Elburn, Booz Allen Hamilton) and our commercial spaceflight panel (Raleigh Wooldridge, Exolaunch; Jungkyu Lee, Nara Space; Paula Trimble, Muon Space; Jon Beam, Rogue Space Systems Corporation) We heard from amazing keynote speakers, starting with Clay Mowry, CEO of AIAA; Debra Facktor, Head of U.S. Space Systems, Airbus US Space & Defense, Inc.; Debra Needham from NASA; Tim Walsh, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator at NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration; and the amazing stories from astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria of Axiom Space #AxiomStation A final thank you for our workshops on cracking DC's government blackbox (Ryan Cooperman, J.D., AIAA; Amber McIntyre, AIA; Zehra Vahanvaty; moderated by Tahara Dawkins, Astroscale U.S.) and imagining the future with Kara C., The Aerospace Corporation Major kudos to Managers Rachita Puri and Caroline Emmert Ellis with the rest of the organizing team for putting together this amazing program! 🚀