SSPI Space & Satellite Professionals International

The peaceful use of space for all nations is consistent with the vision of the United Nations, as it is with every professional in our industry. And there is one group and a person at the UN whose role it is to work toward that vision every hour of the day. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) works to promote international cooperation in the peaceful use and exploration of space and in the utilization of space science and technology for sustainable economic and social development. In the second episode of Invisible, Indispensable Infrastructure, we hear from Aarti Holla-Maini, Director of UNOOSA, a true champion of the peaceful uses of space and its development.
Aarti Holla-Maini is the Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), having taken up post on September 18 following her appointment by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Ms. Holla-Maini brings over 25 years of experience in the space and satellite sector, working predominantly with international organizations and regulators. Prior to the United Nations, she held the post of Secretary-General of the Global Satellite Operators Association. Ms. Holla-Maini is a recognized leader with a strong track record in forging public-private and cross-sector partnerships; high-level advocacy at the international level; strategic communication and managing diverse stakeholders.
Under her leadership, Ms. Holla-Maini expanded the association from being a regional organization to a global one representing commercial satellite operators around the world. She was one of the chief architects of the Crisis Connectivity Charter established in 2015 for emergency telecommunications via satellite with the UN World Food Programme’s Emergency Telecommunications Cluster and has, on multiple occasions, secured recognition and policy support for space technologies to play their rightful role in connecting the unconnected, in Europe, Africa and beyond.
The appointment of Ms. Holla-Maini comes at a time when activities in space are being increasingly driven by the private sector. Her deep experience in high-level advocacy with international organizations and regulators, along with her understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the space sector, will serve Member States well as they seek to access and leverage the benefits of space to accelerate sustainable development. Ms. Holla-Maini’s experience has included service as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Space; member of the Advisory Group of the Space Sustainability Rating managed by eSpace at EPFL Space Center; member of the Advisory Board of the Satellite Industry Association of India; Senior Space Policy Advisor to Forum Europe and an Expert Advisor on Space Traffic Management for European Union studies 2021-2023.
Ms. Holla-Maini holds a bachelor’s degree in law with German law from Kings College London and a master’s degree in business administration from HEC in France. She is fluent in French, German and Punjabi alongside her native English and has moderate knowledge of Dutch.

The world is supported by infrastructure that no one can see. It keeps computers and communication networks running, detects hurricanes and wildfires, tracks methane and carbon emissions. And we go nowhere without it. It guides ships and planes, cares and homes. It battles disease and helps take a bite out of crime. This infrastructure consumes little or no concrete or asphalt and few steel beams for support, yet it circles the entire planet. It is the network of communication and observation satellites.
In the first episode of Invisible, Indispensable Infrastructure, we hear from Karl Horne, Vice President of Cloud and Digital Solutions at SES. Karl is responsible for technology and business strategies for satellite connected cloud and Digital Transformation solutions aimed at the Enterprise, Public Sector and Telco/MNO markets. In this capacity, Karl works across the ecosystem of cloud and network service providers, technology vendors, and solutions integrators to establish SES’s solutions in support of the industry shift towards 5G, IoT, and Cloud Powered Digital Transformations.
Karl has over 30 years of experience in the telecom/datacom industry. Prior to his current position at SES, he has held various Engineering, CTO and Business Development roles for Ciena Corporation, Scientific Atlanta and AT&T Tridom. Karl holds a BSEE from Clemson University.

In this SSPI-WISE Presents podcast, Tamara Bond-Williams, Director of Engagement at SSPI, speaks with Diana Klochkova, Chief Marketing Officer at Privateer Space, a pioneering company dedicated to making space access safer and more accessible. This podcast is the first episode of New Ideas in Space Safety, the podcast of a new SSPI topic campaign: Reducing the Risks of Space, Part 2: New Ideas in Space Safety.
Diana Klochkova is CMO of Privateer, where she leads marketing for the space start-up as it builds the tools that will make space safer and more accessible. Diana’s background spans a variety of roles in B2C, B2B, digital, and content marketing. In 2018, she founded Zaya, a boutique agency focusing on purpose-driven projects. Prior to Zaya, she held leadership roles at Rebel Ventures, Omnicom Media Group and Levi Strauss & Co.

In this Better Satellite World podcast, based on the February 2024 edition of the New York Space Business Roundtable, we take a look with experts at where we stand in early 2024 with regard to the commercial space industry and a battlefield that has bled two societies, threatened the stability of Europe and will take at least a generation’s wealth to repair.
The battle for Ukraine has been a desperate fight.  One filled with miscalculations, brutality and an horrific loss of life. The everyday peace and serenity needed for societies to thrive has been upset in great cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. Europe, the USA and most of the world wants it to end. It will eventually end. But how? Sheer exhaustion? Or can satellites and commercial space play a role?
Our panel of experts includes:
Vera Bergengruen, Senior Correspondent, TIME Magazine David Myers, President & CEO, UltiSat, Inc. Stephen Wood, Senior Director, Maxar News Bureau

In this Making Leaders podcast, we hear from Ed Spitler, Head of SATCOM at Artel and one of three inductees to the Space & Satellite Hall of Fame in 2024. For more than three decades, Ed Spitler has pursued a passionate commitment to support the American warfighter by supplying best-in-class satellite communications systems to power the success of the US Armed Forces. Upon completing his military service as a Cryptographic Telecommunications and Systems Specialist, Ed went to work for the US Department of Defense Contractor, rising from Senior Technical Engineer to Regional Program Manager, OPMAS-EUR, 5th Command, where he played a pivotal role in transitioning seven Defense Communications Sites (DCS) throughout Germany from analog to digital technology.
In 2001, he joined Artel as Vice President of Managed Network Services, in which role he served as program director for more than eight critical DOD and Department of State programs and supported missions including Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan. Leaving Artel in 2012, Ed went on to hold a series of leadership positions, including COO of Vizada, CEO of Astrium Services Government and President of Satcom Services Government Division at Airbus Defense and Space. By 2017, he was back at Artel as Head of Satcom, where he led the company into a multi-orbit future that delivered resilient GEO to LEO connectivity to the government. He led development and delivery of the SPACE FORCE Pathfinder 2 program, which embedded the Pathfinder 2 payload aboard Hispasat’s Amazonas Nexus HTS. The goal was to provide dependable access to connectivity while saving money for Federal agencies compared with short-term satellite capacity leasing. The program produced savings of more than 60 percent over equivalent service.

In this Better Satellite World podcast series, we ask the question: “What would you do if you had the power to make the world a better place during your career?” Joining SSPI’s Lou Zacharilla to answer that question in the third episode are 2 members of the “20 Under 35” cohort of 2023: Srikanth Kodeboyina, Founder and CEO of Blue Eye Soft Corp dba Blue Space and Klaus Okkelberg, Electrical Design & Analysis Engineer at Boeing.
Srikanth Kodeboyina is the Founder and CEO of Blue Eye Soft Corp, currently in the process of becoming Blue Space. He moved to the United States in 2010 to pursue his education and earned his Master’s degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering from the University of Dayton. Within six years of completing his degree, he was working for Fortune 100 companies and managing projects across 14 states with budgets up to $32 million. Srikanth moved on to be commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, which led to him becoming a U.S. citizen. With citizenship came the opportunity to pursue his true dream, starting his own enterprise in the form of Blue Eye Soft (BES). The company initially offered IT consulting and management services, but it quickly expanded to include BlueDoc AI, Blue Space and Blue Space International, creating a specialty in the application of artificial intelligence models to analyze vast amounts of data, text and imagery. BES has established offices in South Carolina and New Mexico and intends to establish a presence in an international business hub in India next. The company has achieved the highest security clearances and been awarded contracts from agencies such as NASA and AFWERX, a technology directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Since founding BES, Srikanth has been chosen by more than 20 organizations to participate in incubator/accelerator programs for top entrepreneurs. He was a member of the first cohort of the New Mexico Lab-Embedded Entrepreneur Program (LEEP) at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was also chosen to be part of MIT’s Engine program that helps the next generation of “Tough Tech” leaders navigate the commercialization process.
Klaus Okkelberg is an Electrical Design & Analysis Engineer at Boeing. In his current position, he works at Boeing Phantom Works Space on moving ground-based signal processing algorithms to space, reducing turnaround time, which is crucial for enabling autonomous operations. Klaus also works with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), specifically deep neural networks (DNNs), for image-based inspection and pose estimation – the detection of the position and orientation – of unknown satellites. Supervised AI/ML greatly reduces the need for feature engineering, meaning fewer engineers and revisions are needed per project. Using DNN algorithms has sped up development of new image processing functions and reduces the cost of developing and deploying new space-based imaging sensors, which has led to many new business opportunities for Boeing with national space government customers. Klaus has personally developed several key innovations in AI/ML, including data augmentations, training regularizations and high-dimensional space embeddings.  These developments greatly reduce generalization error and enable the use of real satellite imagery from different sources without additional pre- or post-processing. Klaus is a graduate of Penn State Schreyer Honors College with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and of the University of New Orleans with a Master’s degree in the same field. At Penn State, his thesis on nonlinear control of marginal oscillators contributed to the more precise detection of explosive materials, providing immense benefit to potential customers such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Klaus interned at Xilinx in their signal integrity division.