1. Summary and Overview
This report is part of a collection of Working Group Reports from the SATCON2 Conference.
1.1. Charge
The SATCON2 Community Engagement Working Group aimed to engage a broad and diverse swath of stakeholders in dark skies and near-Earth space who are impacted by large mega-constellations of tens of thousands of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, beyond professional astronomy alone. The working group consisted of 22 members across 23 time zones including professional and amateur astronomers, members of sovereign Indigenous/First Nations communities, dark-sky advocates, planetarium professionals, and environmental/ecological non-governmental organizations. We set out to work together towards a new and effective conceptual, ethical, legal, and regulatory framework for the protection and sustainability of space and the night sky as a global cultural, natural and scientific commons. Community Engagement Working Group members invested thousands of volunteer hours in working group meetings, listening sessions with impacted constituencies, numerous conversations, developing, conducting and analyzing surveys, and finalizing our results and recommendations.
1.2. Constituencies
For SATCON2, the Community Engagement Working Group focused on five specific constituencies that had not previously been explicitly included in SATCON1 or other policy discussions about satellite constellations, including some groups traditionally excluded from political and economic power:
- Astrophotography and Astro-Tourism
- Amateur Astronomy
- Indigenous Communities and Perspectives
- Planetariums
- Environmental and Ecological Concerns
They shared their feedback, needs and recommendations during listening sessions and conversations before the workshop and during dedicated sessions at the workshop.
