The International Astronautical Congress began on Oct. 14 in Milan, Italy. The gathering of the international space community has met every year since the mid-1950s, bringing together representatives from every country active in space exploration or interested in becoming so. This year’s conference was perhaps the biggest yet, with more than 7,000 technical papers submitted and as many participants attending.
Yet, given the geopolitical situation and the concerted effort of the countries of the West to isolate Russia, there was no representative this year from Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency. Holding such a conference without the space power that initiated the Space Age, with both the first satellite and the first human in space, is nothing short of a travesty. While the participants still expressed a great deal of enthusiasm over the perspective for space exploration, there was something of a disconnect in shaping the event as a celebration of Earthlings’ unity that this conference traditionally expressed.
