Mazlan, the head of the UN’s little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire, according to the www.news.com.au website.
It reported that she is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made thedetection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before — and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.
She recently gave a talk to fellow scientists, saying: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.
“When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”
Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”
However, he thinks humanity’s first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.
Mazlan attended the University of Otago in 1975 earning a Bachelor of Science (honours) and returned to Malaysia as the country’s first astrophysicist, and worked to create a curriculum in astrophysics at the national university, as well as to build public awareness and understanding of astronomy and space issues.
Her interest in public education was rewarded in 1990 when then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad put her in charge of the Planetarium Division of the Prime Minister’s Department, overseeing development of Planetarium Negara, Malaysia’s national planetarium in Kuala Lumpur.
After the planetarium opened in 1993, Othman was made Director General of the government’s new Space Science Studies Division, where she launched a microsatellite development programme. She received a full professorship the following year, according to her wikipedia entry.
In November 1999, then United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan named Mazlan as Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in Vienna but she returned to Malaysia in July 2002 on the request of Dr Mahathir o serve for five years as the founding Director General of Angkasa, the Malaysian National Space Agency, where her work led to the launch of the first Malaysian astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor.
She was reappointed as UNOOSA director in 2007 by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and left Angkasa to return to the post that December
At UNOOSA she deals with issues of international cooperation in space, prevention of collisions and space debris, use of space-based remote sensing platforms for sustainable development, coordination of space law between countries, and the risks posed by near-earth asteroids, among other topics.
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